Hellsing: Strange Aeons
by House Sylveste
Summary: Thirty years after the Millennium attacks, Hellsing encounters monstrous new enemies and mysterious new allies – although telling them apart will be difficult. "That is not dead which can eternal lie..."
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

_April, 2000_

The man in the dust mask and goggles stood on Parliament Hill, and watched the ruins of London.

The Hill had long been know for it's views of the London skyline, and was a popular destination for residents and tourists alike. On a clear day you got one of the best views you were going to get in the Thames valley – One Canada Square (more popularly known as Canary Wharf), St Paul's Cathedral, the BT Tower and many other famous landmarks easily visible, islands in the concrete, glass and steel sea that was central London.

That, however, was the London of old. This new London, ruined and broken, slumped under a pall of ash that blotted out the sun and that was still fed by a number of small fires on the south bank, looked like a vision out of some medieval painting of hell designed to scare the unbeliever into the arms of the clergy.

The man reached up and touched a small slider mounted in the left arm of his goggles. With a quiet whine of servos, the goggle lenses re-focused, zooming in on the devastation that lay before him. Canary Wharf was no longer there, the place where it should have been marked by a scar in the urban landscape caused by the tower's collapse. The BT Tower had been cut in two, shorn off halfway up its length, buckled spars and girders protruding upwards like the frayed edge of a broken bone. The dome of St Paul's had a great chunk taken out of it, as if some monstrous and hungry creature had bent down and taken a bite from it. Zooming in further, not a single building between where the man stood and the Thames seemed to be intact. Whole swathes of housing had been gutted by the fires that had raged throughout the night. Skyscrapers had collapsed onto their neighbours. Apartment blocks crumbled even as he watched them, and a steady rain of fine dust and ash fell from the sky.

_How could this happen?_

That was the overriding thought in his head as he gazed upon the ruined city. _What the hell did this? In just one night! Armies have done less in a year..._He broke off as a block of flats crumpled to the ground about a quarter of a mile from the hill, the groaning crash reverberating around him for a second before the eerie quiet returned.

The sudden noise seemed to make him come to his senses.

_What did this? Let's see if we can't find out._

He returned his goggles to normal zoom, turned and began to walk up the hill, to where three other people dressed very similarly to him – goggles, respirators, thick overcoats – were huddled in a circle around a laptop connected to what looked like a tiny satellite dish. One was typing furiously on the laptop, pausing occasionally to wipe the screen clear of dust. Another was leaning on a pile of four rucksacks and peering over the shoulder of the typing man, while the third was sitting slightly to one side, cradling an assault rifle and looking around the hill as if he were guarding it. Which, in a way, he was.

The man walking back up the hill paused for a second, watching them work. Together, the four of them made up Echo cell, an ultra-secret covert ops group whose job was, ultimately, do do whatever it was they were damn well told to by their paymasters, be it putting a bullet between the eyes of a suspected terrorist, blowing up military bases or, as in this case, stealing secrets from the people who were meant to be their closest allies.

The man on the hill was Echo-Three-Eight, the commander of the cell. The one typing at the laptop was Echo-Four-Oh, the squad's technical specialist. It was his job to know every last piece of circuity and line of code under the sun – and be able to subvert every last one of them, if need be. He was also the closest the team had to a medic, although his detailed knowledge of human biology was more likely to be used in an assassination than to heal a teammate, for the simple reason that Echo cell members very rarely got shot. The man watching Four-Oh work was Echo-Six-Two, whose job description was half demolitions expert and half mechanic. Finally, the man sitting off to one side was Echo-Oh-Seven. He had no speciality other than combat, but as with all Echo cell members, he was very good at what he did.

Three-Eight rejoined his fellows. "Comms working yet?" he asked of Four-Oh. The filter mask he wore changed his voice into a largely emotionless, monotonal drone. It was an effect he found annoying, but it was better than Echo cell members giving themselves away by any accents they had. This was one job, after all, where they would be hard-pressed to pose as tourists.

"Getting there, Boss, getting there," muttered Four-Oh.

Although it was officially discouraged, the members of Echo cell had taken to giving each other nicknames. Four-Oh was Arc, Six-Two went by the name of Mech and Oh-Seven was Psycho. Three-Eight was, of course, Boss.

"I don't know why this is taking so long," murmured Mech.

Arc gave an exasperated sigh, turned by his filter mask into a mournful buzz.

"It's simple. Well, no, actually, it's anything but. But this..." here Arc waved an arm to encompass the laptop and the small dish. "This all works by hiding its signal inside local traffic. It works best by piggybacking on civilian communication networks. Unfortunately, thanks to whatever the hell has happened here, there isn't much of a network left, and what there is is being swamped by survivors still trying to call 911 for help."

"They'd have more luck dialling 999," remarked Boss.

"They might as well call the local pizza place for all it's worth. Comms are jammed solid, which makes my job a lot harder."

"But you can still get us in touch with command, right?"

"Give me ten minutes, and we'll see."

Ten minutes later, Arc declared that it was as good as they were going to get, and the call went through. After a minute of back-and-forth codewords to make sure both parties were talking to who they were supposed to, command got down to business.

"Your fundamental mission objectives haven't changed," came the voice though their earpieces. As with the masks of Echo cell, this voice was electronically altered to make the speaker unrecognisable. "We still want ground recon of the London area. However, we now want you to focus your efforts on one spot."

The laptop screen flickered and changed, showing a grainy image of what looked like a red-and-black deflated balloon, next to a smaller grey square.

"This image was taken a short while ago by a KH-12 satellite. Apologies for quality, but it's hard to see anything through the smog layer. The square feature you can see to the right is Trafalgar Square. As for the other object...well, that, gentlemen, is what we want you to investigate."

"What the hell is it?" asked Arc.

"We believe it to be some sort of airship," came the reply.

Boss just stared at the picture. _No. That is not an airship. It must be three or four hundred metres long. Airships aren't that big..._

"Based on what limited intel we have at the moment, we believe it to be the enemy's command-and-control headquarters. Your objective now is to get inside it and recover every last scrap of information you can from it. We want pictures, video, papers if you can carry them and copies if you can't. We'll want tissue samples, which is why we provided you with a refrigerated storage container..."

Boss could feel his grip on the situation starting to slip ever so slightly.

"Hold on command," he interjected. "_Enemies_? What kind of hostiles are we looking at here?"

"Look at London, and you'll see the answer. But don't worry. We're pretty certain that none of them are still active."

"Only pretty sure?" grunted Psycho, the first time Boss had heard him speak since he came back.

"We have good reason to believe that all hostiles in the London area have been terminated. That's why you have been sent in. We want as much intel as you can possibly gather. You have three hours before an extraction team will touch down at Trafalgar Square to get you out. Challenge is 'thunder', codeword 'flash'. Confirm."

"Thunder, flash," said Boss.

"Good. The team will be disguised as an SAS team searching for survivors. And one last thing. Once you've got everything you can, your orders are to destroy everything. Burn it, use C4, use whatever methods necessary, but what you discover there must fall into no-one's hands but ours. Understood?"

"Perfectly," replied Boss. "What if we meet a genuine SAS team?"

"Hopefully, you won't. We have agents in Fortress Dover stalling the British high command for everything they're worth. But three hours is the limit. If you do meet anyone, your orders stand. Use your discretion. Over and out."

A quite bleep signified the connection had been cut. The four members of Echo cell looked at one another.

"Well, orders are orders. Time to move out," said Boss.

"Copy that," said Mech, as if his mind were on other things. "And..._tissue samples_?"

* * *

It was, indeed, an airship.

Boss stared at the enormous chequered flank of the thing, his slack jaw thankfully concealed behind his mask. He didn't think he'd ever seen anything that big in his life before, save for skyscrapers. And to think that it must have _flown_...

He motioned his team to fall in and moved closer to the crumpled leviathan. Most of its superstructure had collapsed in upon itself, but large amounts of the skin remained, tattered and torn as the wind whipped it against the bare metal ribs. From it, Boss could see that the craft had indeed been painted a slightly incongruous red-and-black, as the satellite image showed. Half-buried under the wreckage was a large gondola, bristling with antennae, the front section honeycombed with windows.

"Interesting colour scheme," piped up Mech, echoing Boss' thoughts exactly.

"We're not here to discuss décor, Six-Two," growled Arc. "Let's see if we can't find a way in."

Mech rolled his eyes behind his tinted goggles, and all four of them began scanning the side of the gondola for an entry point. Eventually, Psycho pointed out a scar in the mid-section that afforded the only way in that wasn't blocked by debris. Boss ordered him to proceed and check it out.

"Looks clear," said Psycho when he came back. The rest of the team had busied themselves taking pictures of the zeppelin from every angle they could, while keeping one eye out for command's mysterious hostiles. "No-one inside that I could see, although it's a mess in there. I think it leads to a cargo bay. Large space, lots of boxes." Having said all he had to say, Psycho started scanning the ruins of nearby buildings. "Anyone see any hostiles?" he asked, almost conversationally.

"No. And I'd rather not get into a firefight if I don't have to," replied Boss. "Not this time. Certainly not if they could do this."

No-one needed to ask what 'this' was.

Inside what Psycho had identified as a cargo bay, the only sound was the groan of tortured metal as the zeppelin slowly folded further in on itself. Each member of Echo cell had now brought out a weapon and was holding it alertly. There was an unspoken feeling that they were deep in enemy territory. Hundreds of wooden crates lay tossed around, as if a tornado had blown through the cargo bay.

"Anyone see anything interesting?" asked Arc quietly.

Mech peered inside an open crate as Arc said this. "Negative. Actually, wait. This box...it's full of teeth."

There was a long pause.

"Teeth?" asked Boss.

"Yeah. Fake ones, I think. Like gold, and a few silver ones."

Arc moved over to the crate.

"Jesus," he muttered. "Looks like something you'd see on display at Auschwitz."

It was about five minutes later that they found their first body. A man, stripped to the waist, wearing nothing but military-issue trousers and combat boots, lay on his back in a pool of his own blood. The wall behind him was covered in bullet holes, but it didn't look like a bullet had killed him. There was a horrific gouge in his torso, running from his navel to the top of his chest. Boss, who had seen far worse injuries than that in his life, wasn't particularly fazed. But he was unnerved by the man's expression. He was grinning hugely, as if he'd just been told the best joke of his life.

Arc bent over the body and, after taking some photos, began rummaging around inside the man's wound with a knife and a pair of tweezers. After a few seconds work he grunted and held up something for the rest of the team to see, glistening wetly in his tweezers.

"Found this in his heart. Looks like it was put there with some force."

Boss leaned forward to get a better look. Under the red blood, a silver glimmer could be seen.

"Another tooth?" he asked.

"Yup. And I'll tell you something strange. The flesh around the tooth – but nowhere else, mind you – was melted. All deformed and bubbled, as if the tooth was white-hot when it went in. But you can't heat silver that much and have it keep its shape."

"Maybe it's not silver?" ventured Mech.

"Sure looks like silver. Anyway, why would you bother killing someone with a white-hot tooth made of _anything _when you've clearly got a lot of bullets to spare?" asked Arc, gesturing at the pock-marked wall.

With no answer forthcoming, Arc busied himself with obtaining the tissue samples that command had specified. This had been something of a sore point earlier, when he had been forced to admit that during the preliminary briefing the people at command had given him a refrigerated sample unit but ordered him only to reveal its existence if mentioned by command in the field briefing. His teammates hadn't been angry with him – as Boss had said, orders were orders – but none of them liked the way command was asking them to keep secrets from one another. Clearly, the higher-ups were playing this even closer to the chest than was normal.

They moved away from the corpse, down a corridor that seemed to run parallel with the ship's spine. Eventually, they reached a T-junction. Two signs were printed on the wall. One, pointing left, read 'Hauptquartier'. The other directed those headed to 'Chirurgie' to take the right-hand corridor.

"So, which way, Boss?" asked Mech.

Boss glanced at his watch. The walk down from Parliament Hill had taken longer than he'd liked, and time was beginning to bleed away. Extraction would be in about an hour. He looked at the signs again, and came to a decision.

"We split up," he said. "Arc and I will take the left, while you and Psycho head right and see what you can find. Don't forget to plant C4 when you're done. We'll meet back here in 45 minutes."

To murmurs of assent from his squad, Boss and Arc headed down the left corridor.

* * *

If the body of the man in cargo had been troubling, these were much, much worse.

They lay spread around the corridor like discarded dolls, with so much blood on the walls that it was impossible to tell what colour the corridor had originally been. But again, it wasn't the gore that was the problem.

"I...I don't know what to think here, Boss," said Arc in an unsteady voice. He was knelt over the closest body, looking into the man's mouth and reminding Boss for all the world of a dentist. Boss was about to laugh at that – the world's first combat dentist – when he noticed that what little of Arc's skin that was visible around the goggles and mask was quite pale.

"These teeth...I've never...I mean, take a look..." Arc tilted the man's head so that Boss could see, and for the second time that day Boss felt his mouth fall open in shock. It was like gazing down the throat of a shark. Instead of the incisors, canines, molars that every person he'd ever met sported, that he still vaguely remembered being taught about in school, there was merely two rows of viciously sharp fangs. Some didn't even look like teeth at all, just jagged extensions of the jawbone. He recoiled instinctively.

"That's, ah...that's not normal, is it?" Boss croaked, trying desperately to keep his voice steady. "I mean, there's no disease or genetic condition..." He left the sentence hanging in the air.

"No. Nothing." Arc's voice sounded flat, even with the voice-altering mask. He paused. "There's something else, Boss." He held the collar of the man's coat, which had been hidden from Boss by his sleeve, up to the light. There, on the lapel, was a symbol that might have been two lightning bolts, or might have been...

"S.S." whispered Boss. "_What the fuck_?"

"I think," said Arc, with visible effort, "that I should take a tissue sample, you should take some pictures, we should wire this corridor to blow and then carry on to the headquarters or whatever the sign said."

* * *

Boss had to agree.

An hour later, sat inside an RAF-liveried Chinook helicopter speeding north, the four members of Echo cell sat in an uncharacteristic silence.

As they'd waited for extraction, Mech had done his best to describe what he and Psycho had found in what looked like an operating theatre-cum-laboratory. He talked of a 'motherlode' of paperwork, all of it in German, which both he and Psycho had a passable understanding of. Most of it, he said, looked like it was detailing surgical procedures, although neither of them could be certain. They'd found two more bodies – three if you counted an antique skeleton. One of the bodies was dressed in a lab coat and was presumed to be that of the owner of the laboratory. The other, bizarrely, was dressed as a butler. Mech also mentioned that the lab had been strewn with monofilament wires.

Arc, for his part, had told the other two of the ruined command centre he and Boss had found, and the body of the man – if you could call it a man, with that much clockwork sticking out of him – found within.

Boss, however, wasn't thinking of any of that. Something else was worrying him more. Something Mech had said, just before the evac chopper had touched down.

"Anyone know what midian translates as?" Mech had asked. "It was written all over the papers we recovered, but I've no idea what it means."

Boss thought he had heard the word, once. It was a very archaic term, he knew that, but as for what it meant...

A scrap of paper on the command room floor, the charred remains of what looked like an official report. The only line visible saying that something called Schrödinger was the only hope of killing something called Alucard.

Psycho mentioning the skeleton they had found having a small plaque with the name 'Mina Harker' attached to its skull.

_A man who shrugged off a hundred bullets, but was killed by a tiny piece of silver._

_Midians._

_Harker._

_Alucard._

_The inhuman teeth of the SS men – and might not inhuman be just the right word?_

Boss didn't like any of this, not at all.

The helicopter soared away, northwards. Behind it, the now-blazing ruins of the zeppelin poured another column of smoke into the grey sky.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

_January, 2031_

Sir Integra Hellsing had once heard that Joseph Kennedy had first been told of the Soviet missile build-up in Cuba over breakfast one morning in the White House. She was developing an acute understanding of how he must have felt. Bad news at breakfast time tended to cast a pall over the whole day – and, potentially, a lot of days to follow.

She was sat at her desk, in the second-floor room that served as the office of the Director of the Royal Order of Protestant Knights – otherwise known as the Hellsing Agency. Previous holders of the title Director would, she knew, have been up in arms at her refusal to take breakfast in the sumptuous ground-floor dining room built and fitted for that very purpose. Her father, Arthur Hellsing, was legendary amongst the staff in his day for the size of the breakfast he was able to consume each morning. "No sense starting the day on empty," he would often say, as he demolished a second plate of fried eggs and bacon.

Integra, however, favoured a slightly more restrained approach to her morning, and was content with nothing more than a croissant and the great British institution that was a cup of tea. This was usually accompanied by a physical copy of the days _Times _newspaper, one of the few newspapers nowadays that still bothered to print an actual newspaper any more at all, instead of the more common daily news download favoured by other members of Fleet Street.

Today's copy of the _Times_ was, however, not the source of her worries. Those came from her other piece of reading material. It was a post-mortem report from a London hospital, detailing the findings of the pathologist after examining the body of one Kevin Malone, age 28 years, after he had been found dead two nights ago in a back alley in Wapping. Stapled to that was the police report concerning the circumstances of the body's recovery. Stapled to _that_, in what was becoming a Matryoshka doll of bureaucracy, was a note from the Hellsing clerk who had handed her the reports half an hour ago, saying that Sir Feilding, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and a fellow member of the Convention of Twelve, would be 'strongly discouraging' a public inquest into the man's death.

As well he might. Kevin Malone was, officially, a nondescript real estate agent originally from Bristol and now living in Denham Green, one of the sprawls of cheap housing in the west of London that had been hurriedly built three decades ago to try and house the survivors of the London attacks. Unofficially, though, Malone was a member of a very rare breed – a human field agent of Hellsing.

Integra took a sip of tea, and followed it with a bite of croissant. As she chewed, she wondered how to handle this. The manner of Malone's death made it very clear who – or what, depending on which pronoun you favoured – was responsible. Despite the fact that gang warfare and violent crime were still problems in London, there was only one group of people who were able to leave a man completely drained of his blood.

_There really is only one option_, she thought after a few minutes. _We've been soft on these creatures for too long now, trying to keep things quiet. Maybe it's time to remind them of what Hellsing is really capable of._

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small handheld, a cheap model that offered none of the prestige of a Google or Sony model but which had, as far as Integra was concerned, one great advantage over its more classy rivals – if you dropped it down of flight of stairs, it would still be working by the time it hit the bottom. Hellsing always preferred durability.

Her day was fully booked, mostly with a Convention of Twelve conference with the King at Krauney House, until 5pm.

She reached over and pressed two buttons on the intercom on her desk. "Alucard, Seras," she said, "I want to see both of you in my office at 6pm sharp."

* * *

Seras had never really been certain whether vampires needed to brush their teeth, but insisted upon doing so anyway. She knew Alucard probably held her in the deepest contempt for sticking to so human a gesture, but she felt that to give in completely to her vampiric side – even after thirty years as a fully fledged undead – would be somehow wrong. A step too far, perhaps, although some would say it was already far too late to worry about that.

Pushing these thoughts to the back of her mind, she finished up and glanced at her watch. 5:45pm. Judging from her tone earlier today, Sir Integra probably had an important job for her and her master, although she couldn't imagine what. From what she'd heard, everything had been pretty quiet these past few months, with a much lower incident rate – that's what all the official documents called it, the 'incident rate' – than was normal. Vampires, as she knew personally, loved the winter season, with its weak sun during the day and cold, long nights. The way the day ended so swiftly, the sun going down in under half an hour, was also a benefit to the undead. Many an unwary person would be caught out by the sudden retreat of the light, and then caught again by the things that lived in the shadows.

The thought of that reminded her of the first few years after London. In those dark times immediately after the capital's destruction, before the first Anglo-American reconstruction plans began to breathe life into the city and the country once more, the nation had been a mess. Hundreds of artificial vampires, Millennium sleeper agents, had wreaked havoc across England, with enormous death tolls. Sometimes, they would still be tracking down one vampire when news of another series of attacks landed on the director's desk, the words 'Most Urgent' splashed across the top of the report. Still, the situation was rumoured to be even worse on the continent, where the remains of Iscariot struggled desperately to contain the tide of vampirism that had swept in in the wake of Millennium's diversionary attacks.

Maybe it was just that, some Last Battalion newborn crawling out of the woodwork and going on a rampage, intoxicated with their new-found power and never once suspecting that the night might harbour nastier things than they. But if it was, then why now, after thirty years? And why the wait since morning?

As she got dressed, Seras decided not to worry too much about it. Sir Integra would explain when the time came. And besides, any excuse to work with her master again after thirty years was welcome.

With this thought in mind, Seras began walking up towards Sir Integra's office, finally emerging in complete silence through the wall facing the director's desk.

"Ah, Seras. You're right on time," said Sir Integra, without looking up from her paperwork. Over thirty years, it had become a long-standing joke between the two women – Sir Integra would never, ever be caught off-guard by a vampire, and certainly not by one she employed.

Integra motioned towards one of two empty chairs in front of her desk. "Have a seat. I hope you don't mind, but I'll wait until Alucard is here as well before I begin." She gave a small smirk. "If I didn't know better, I'd think he was keeping us waiting."

"Anything happening in the world today?" asked Seras, gesturing to Integra's copy of the _Times_ that lay discarded in the recycling bin as she sat down.

"Oh, not a whole lot," the other woman replied. "The Chinese and the Americans are still shouting at each other over that carrier-sub the Yanks found sunk off California. USA says it was on an espionage run or something like that, Beijing insists it was a tragic navigational error. There's a scandal brewing in Parliament over MP's expenses, _again_. There was a small piece about the Victoria Overground line being opened next week, and some environmentalists in north Wales are complaining that a new set of electricity pylons is ruining their view. Beyond that, just the usual wails about the moral fabric of this once-great nation coming apart at the seams."

"I always thought it was the _Daily Mail_ that went in for that," said Seras.

"Oh, the _Times_ isn't afraid to do some hand-wringing if it'll shift papers." Integra gave a small sigh. "I remember when it used to be a good newspaper. Although I imagine only Alucard has a memory long enough to remember when any of the papers were actually worth reading."

"Speak of the devil, and he shall appear."

With a quiet rustle of displaced air, Alucard winked into existence in the chair next so Seras'. Seras gave a small start; she still wasn't quite used to her master's new abilities yet. Integra remained, as always, unperturbed.

"You remain as late as ever, servant," was all she said to the figure in the black suit and red coat.

Alucard gave a small smile. "I will accept the rebuke-"

"You'd better."

"-but it was not completely without reason. I was, in fact, trying to squeeze some more information out of my newest vassal."

They had been over this before. While the abilities and knowledge of any human Alucard consumed would be child's play for him to master and absorb, Warrant Officer Schrödinger was not human. No-one really knew what he was, other than an expression of quantum mechanics somehow made flesh. As such, his soul was far harder for Alucard to read, necessitating long times 'interrogating' the young boy on how to work his abilities. Integra had never asked just what 'interrogating' involved.

"Any luck?" asked Integra, wondering if she might get some good news for the first time today.

"Afraid not." Alucard grimaced. "I fear the thirty years in limbo has started to take its toll. It grows more erratic by the day."

Seras, and occasionally Integra, would usually refer to the trapped entity as 'he'. Alucard, on the other hand, never did, and it was on occasions like this that Seras would wonder what her master knew that she perhaps did not.

Or maybe he was just taking every opportunity to demean the thing that had put him in a featureless limbo for thirty long years. Considering Alucard, that was more than likely.

Sir Integra did her best to mask her disappointment. What she really hoped for was the day Alucard learned how to infiltrate mental realms, at which point he would become even more valuable to Hellsing than he was already. Unfortunately, it still wasn't certain that this was even a possibility. Schrödinger himself, Alucard reported, had only hinted at it.

"It's partly because of Iscariot that I've called this meeting," she said, bringing the conversation to the matter in hand. "Or rather, because of Iscariot's incompetence."

"The Vatican's executioners?" asked Alucard. "Let me guess – they've sent a paladin where they shouldn't have again?"

"They're not in much of a position to send paladins _anywhere_ at the moment," replied Integra. "After the ninth crusade, Iscariot's power, both militarily and within the Vatican, collapsed. The Pope was horrified when he learned what Maxwell had done in London, and for a while it looked like Section Thirteen would be shut down entirely. Thankfully for Europe it didn't come to that, but Iscariot is still a much weaker power than it was three decades ago.

"The upshot of this is that, for vampires, Catholic Europe is seen as something of a safe haven. The Vatican no longer has the resources – or, it would seem, the will – to hunt down more than a small fraction of the total number. Certainly compared to the UK, where we've been largely successful in keeping our vampire numbers under control, Europe is a place where vampires may yet feel secure.

"About three years ago now, Iscariot contacted us about an upsurge in the numbers of vampires on the continent that seemed to be of British descent. They had the suspicion that Hellsing was, instead of killing vampires, merely boxing them up and shipping them across the Channel where we could be rid of them." Integra scowled at the memory. "Needless to say, I quickly convinced Cardinal M'quve that this was not the case."

Both Alucard and Seras smiled at that; Hellsing agents did not call Sir Integra the 'Iron Maiden' for nothing. Alucard could only imagine what Integra's reaction to the suggestion that Hellsing was slacking off had been. Seras, on the other hand, didn't need to – she'd been in the manor the day that call came through and, along with the rest of the staff in the north wing, had quite clearly heard the string of bellowed insults that came from the director's office. No-one had dared ask what all the trouble had been about, even years later.

"It quickly became clear that a lot of vampires were fleeing England for the continent and, even worse, someone was helping them. We began to get word of an underground network of safehouses and collaborators called the 'railroad' who would, for a fee, help any vampire fearing for its neck escape across the Channel. Naturally, Iscariot was very insistent that we shut this network down.

"We managed to locate one link in this chain, and sent in an agent of ours to investigate. Suffice to say we don't need to worry about his pension plan any more."

Alucard looked momentarily shocked. "You sent a human against a pack of vampires ready to fight for their lives?" he demanded angrily.

Integra glared at him. "Actually, we sent him to investigate one of the human collaborators. We hoped to learn something about the whole network first, and only then go in guns blazing. Unfortunately, we seem to have had our hand forced. Our agent was probably made to confess everything before they killed him."

"Are we sure of that?" asked Seras, a little uneasily.

"It's what I'd have done," Integra replied. "And they know who they're up against, so it would be foolish for them not to.

"Our agent was investigating a man called Jacob Page. He's a business magnate who owns a string of properties across London – stuff he bought up cheap after the Long Night, before turning them into business parks, nightclubs, retail units, that sort of thing. We're almost certain that he's a key player in the network – and we also know where he'll be tomorrow night. His penthouse apartment, in the Shard."

"And what are your orders regarding this man?"asked Alucard, his voice tinged with anticipation.

"I think it's time to send Britain's vampire community a message," replied Integra. "That Alucard has returned, that Hellsing is back up to full strength...and that we will show no mercy.

"Your orders are simple, my servants: search and destroy."

* * *

London was beautiful at night, especially if you were as far from its streets as it was possible to get.

Jacob Page was glad of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his apartment's living room, for he was confident that he would never tire of the view they offered. From the top floor of the Shard, the tallest building in Europe and the newest addition to the capital's skyline, London was a dazzling environment of light. There were rivers of headlights as cars, buses, lorries and trams picked their way through the sinuous roads of the capital. Gleaming spires jutted their way into the sky, each window a square of gold, advertisements shimmering red and green up their sides. There was the orange of the old sodium street lights, contrasting with the pale azure of the new LED installations. And draped around it all, weaving between skyscrapers and vaulting over new terraced housing districts like a web spun across the city, suspended on its giant stilts and hung from overhead gantries, was the new Overground network. With Page being a proud sponsor of its construction, the Overground had replaced the decrepit old Underground system of tunnels, the one part of old London that no-one had been able to save. The collapsed tunnels and crumpled stations had been left to rot, and the new overhead network had risen to take their place. Many considered it a fitting symbol for the city itself.

"You should have a look, sometime," he said, turning to address the figure curled up on his sofa. "Not many people get to see London like this. And you may never get a chance to see the city again, you know."

The figure nodded glumly, but said nothing. Page shrugged. "Suit yourself," he muttered, and turned back to the view. Looking westwards, he noticed the running lights of a police drone swooping through the skyline. It paused, hovering over one of the housing complexes that was home to London's poorest residents. The great sprawls of apartment towers and terraced housing, built just after the Long Night, were now full of gangs waging endless wars over territory. Page always found it amusing how some of the wealthiest men in Europe and the world – himself included – could live just 30 minutes away from such grinding poverty and violence. It was only the Metropolitan Police, which now resembled a small army with its combat drones, heavy-duty firearms and power-assist body armour, that kept the two worlds separate. The Thin Blue Line had never been thinner, although they could always count on 'charitable donations' from those who enjoyed the status quo.

As Page watched, there was a small flicker of light from one of the apartment buildings next to the drone. Small-arms fire, he guessed. The drone wheeled around and there was a corresponding flare of light from its nose, followed by a small puff of smoke from the building. The drone flew on, satisfied that whatever had attacked it was no longer a problem.

Page smiled to himself – _my taxes at work_, he thought – and walked back towards the centre of his living room. The person on the sofa hadn't moved much.

The figure was that of a young boy, about 14 years of age, although of course his parents had done their best not to tell Page anything about him other than his predicament. Very wise of them, too. Not so wise of Page, though – the railroad escape route was meant to be shut down after those fools in Wapping had decided to provoke Hellsing. Page himself had said that it was best to lie low for at least a month or two until the Royal Order forgot about them. But then this boy had turned up and, well, it had been a very, very large cheque his father had written.

They had come to him a week ago, the father looking grim and distant as if this was something that would all just go away if he refused to think about it too much. His wife was worse, though, constantly breaking down in tears, convinced that 'her little boy' was going to be summarily executed by a Hellsing agent. Page had decided not to tell her that she was right.

And then there was the boy himself, pale and sullen and constantly running his tongue over his teeth, sometimes exposing a set of canines that were sharper than they had any right to be.

Page had sat the two adults down, given them both a stiff drink and told them that their son would be in the safest hands and that he would fare far better in Europe. Iscariot, he explained, already had its hands full and wouldn't waste time over one child. He knew people who would look after the boy, and make sure he was kept fed and safe. It bothered him slightly that the parents were both fully aware of Hellsing and Iscariot, and had been able to find out about the railroad so quickly – that meant one of them was probably government, and government was only one step away from Hellsing itself – but he figured that they were genuine.

_One last job, and the railroad closes for the year_, he thought to himself.

The boy stirred, and spoke for the first time since his parents had left. "I don't want to leave," he said, petulantly.

Page frowned. "Well, you have to. Your parents want you out of the country before Hellsing catches up with you. They've paid a lot of money to keep you safe." Inwardly, he was groaning. He had never got on well with children, and how he had to take care of one until a boat could be found to take it to Calais.

"What if Hellsing catches up with me here?"

Page gave a small laugh at that. "They won't. We operate in total secrecy here, and I've got some very good guards in case anyone comes to ask some questions."

* * *

The guards hadn't posed much of a problem.

They lay sprawled across the lobby of the Shard, each one riddled with bullet holes. Blood covered the floor, was splashed up the walls and dotted the ceiling like the work of a visceral and demented Jackson Pollock. Alucard breathed in deeply, the scent of slaughter wafting enticingly up his nostrils. So much blood, and all of it wasted. He wished deeply that he could feed properly again, after thirty-one years of hunger. But to do so would be to dilute Schrödinger and have him fade back into nothingness, back into the cold pit of Limbo that he had spent three decades clawing his way out of again. It was medical blood from now on for Hellsing's tame demon. A small victory for the Major after all, perhaps.

Seras's voice jerked him out of his thoughts.

"Master? Are you all right?"

"Of course I am," he replied after the briefest hesitation. "Mr Page is going to need more than these mangy guard dogs to deter us."

Seras smiled, apparently satisfied with that. "I see you haven't lost your touch," she said, pointing to a row of guards who had all been felled by a neat shot to the forehead.

The guards had all been vampires. Stationed in a small room to one side of the lobby, they had come speeding out the moment they had seen Alucard and Seras walking into the lobby on the security monitors. They'd barely had time to raise their weapons before being cut down.

Alucard looked up at the ceiling of the lobby, his eyes narrowing slightly, as if he were peering through the metres of concrete. "I think Mr Page is indeed at home," he said after a second. "Time to show me what you've learned in the thirty years, draculina. You can do combat – but what about tactics?"

_Another bloody test_, mused Seras with a small inward sigh.

"I had a look at the blueprints for the Shard before we set off," she replied. "Someone in the records department owed me a favour. There's a small private lift from the penthouse to the underground car park – probably Page's escape route if anything goes wrong."

She slotted a new magazine into her rifle in one fluid, lighting-fast motion.

"And I don't think the pincer movement has gone out of fashion just yet."

* * *

If ever Hellsing needed evidence of his guilt, Page thought, they wouldn't need to comb through his tax forms or shadow him with secret agents. They'd just need to take one look inside his fridge.

Its contents were fairly normal – milk, vegetables, eggs, bread, cold meats, fruit juice – up until the top shelf, which contained several clear plastic bags full of a dark red liquid that could be mistaken for red wine for a second, if red wine was ever packaged in bags labelled 'AB positive'. Page believed in being a good host, especially for his paying customers.

He removed one of the bags from the fridge, and set it down on the coffee table in front of the boy. He hoped that if he gave it something to eat then he could be excused not bothering to make conversation – not that the boy was being very talkative anyway. Apart from saying that he would answer to the name Nicholas, he had only said about three sentences to Page in the thirty-six hours he'd been in his apartment.

Page walked over to his sideboard and decanted himself a glass of whiskey. The sideboard's surface sprang into life as he set the glass down, projecting lists of work that needed to be done – mergers to be negotiated, meetings and public appearances to attend, phone calls to make...The lists seemed to go on for ever.

He turned around, just in time to see a man appear next to the living room door.

Page prided himself on being caught off-guard by practically nothing, but this was too much. The man hadn't walked in – there had been no sound of the door opening or closing – and besides, he'd _seen_ him appear. It was like someone had turned a hologram on.

That was his first thought: _this cannot be real. Men do not appear out of thin air, this must be a joke, a trick to scare me..._

And underneath that, his memory screamed at him that he should know who this man was.

The man took a step into the room, towards Page. At the sound of his footfall, Nicholas' head snapped round, the boy looking both fearful and furious.

The man reached inside his blood-red coat, gave a savage grin and pulled out one of the largest handguns Page had seen in his life. And then everything seemed to happen at once.

Nicholas gave a horrid, inhuman screech. Baring his teeth like a wild animal, he leapt off the sofa and dove at the man. Page was already turning to run, finally remembering just what memory the man was triggering. He sprinted down the corridor that lead to his private lift, and behind him a gunshot rang out, impossibly loud in the confines of the apartment, a gurgling, dying wail following it.

_Oh God oh God please no not him not him_

He remembered now the one the vampires spoke of, the one they truly feared. The no-life king, the lord of the dead who prowled the earth, turned against his own kind by some impossible magic. The one whose coat was rumoured to be dyed red with the blood of his victims, whose bullets always found their mark, who hunted and who could not be fled from.

_Alucard._

If he could just get to the lift, Page might yet be safe, and by some miracle here it was, rising to meet him, the doors sweeping invitingly open-

-to reveal a rifle muzzle pointed squarely at his heart, wielded by a young blonde woman wearing a suit that bore the crest of Hellsing on its breast pocket. Her eyes blazed red like coals in a furnace.

The rifle's roar was even louder than that of Alucard's handgun. Page crumpled as his chest was blown out, and collapsed. His momentum carried him on, and his corpse slid to a stop at Seras' feet.

Seras picked her way carefully over his body as her eyes faded back to their more natural blue. She followed the corridor down to the living room where Alucard was helping himself to some blood from the dead man's fridge. She noticed splashes of blood here too, and saw another body splayed out over the back of a sofa. Although she couldn't see its face, she could tell from its size that it must have been a child's.

"Before you ask – and I know you were going to," called Alucard from the walk-in kitchen, "the child was a vampire." He snorted. "Pathetic – the first fight I get into after I get back is with some lazy guards and a clumsy child."

Seras was still staring in surprise at the small cadaver. "I've never seen a vampire that young," she said.

Alucard came back into the room, supping from a bag of blood. "Hardly surprising, Seras. After all, if you had the choice between the five litres of blood an adult offers you or the three that you'll find in a child, which would you choose? Someone must have been getting desperate," he said, nodding at the body. "Either that or they wanted an apprentice," he added.

There was a silence as they both considered that possibility, Alucard with glee at the prospect of another vampire to fight, and Seras with mounting concern for the exact same reason.

"Regardless, I think I'm done here. I'll see you back at the manor," Alucard said with faint emphasis on the _I'm_, and vanished. Seras scowled at the air where her master had been a second before. She pulled a phone out of one of her pockets and began to call Metropolitan police units that had been waiting for her all-clear.

_At least he's permanently ditched 'police girl'_, she thought to herself as the call was connected.

* * *

_Three and a half thousand miles away, two men sift through a pile of images. CCTV, timestamped at midnight two days previously. The images are not physical copies, but are projected onto the touchscreen surface of a desk. _

"_We managed to get these through a source in MI5," says one man._

_The other just grunts, and motions for one of the pictures to zoom in. It shows a man in a dark red coat and wide-brimmed hat walking through the double-doors of a lobby. His face is largely concealed in shadow._

_Another picture, guards pouring out of a room to the man's right. The man is pointing a gun at them._

_Another. The first guard is falling,the back of his head erupting outwards._

_Another. All the guards are dead. It has not yet been thirty seconds since the man and woman fist entered the lobby._

_The man looking at the pictures frowns. The other man passes him another, this one a close-up of the shooting man's face, which is split open in an enormous grin. Jagged, jutting fangs are visible._

_There is silence in the room, for a little while._

_The man who spoke of the MI5 source speaks again: "It's him, sir. Couldn't be anyone else. Plus, we've been hearing his name in official traffic a lot more frequently these past few months."_

"_Alucard. He's back." It is a statement, not a question._

"_Yes, sir. And, considering what we discussed..."_

"_All right, all right, we've been over that before. I'll get airtime with the council. But Orpheus is your project, and it's your job to sell it to them."_

"_Yes, sir. Don't worry. I promise you, they will not be disappointed."_


	3. Chapter 3

_Author's note: In this chapter, I start to bring in some original characters. They will become fairly important to the plot, although the focus of the story will remain on our friends at Hellsing. So if you're not a fan of OCs, you have been warned – and thank you for reading this far._

* * *

Chapter 3

Alucard was never sure exactly where he ended up when he plunged into the depths of his soul, but he would be the first to admit that it was not the nicest of places.

There was always a dizzying moment of vertigo as his spirit seemed to detach from his corporeal form and plummet downwards, hurtling further into itself in a manner that Alucard always thought would resemble something by Escher if viewed by an external observer. There would be a sense of falling – _falling to where?_ – and then a jarring shock, as if he had landed.

Where he landed, he could not say. He was always standing on something, so there must be a floor. From the sound his boots made, he thought it was cobbled. It was pitch black, with no light sources at all, but he was always illuminated quite brightly. He could see his arms, legs and body perfectly well, as if the walls of this place simply absorbed all light that fell on them, leaving him the only visible thing. Overall, he always thought of this place as a great dungeon, as vast as it was under-lit.

_And every dungeon needs its prisoners_, he thought wryly to himself. For this was the place where the great no-life king's vassal-souls were held. Once, it had played host to an incredible number of souls, ranging from Turkish janissaries and Wallachian horsemen to French noblemen, Russian peasants and Brazilian SWAT officers. During those days, when this great chamber had echoed to the sound of over three million dead, Alucard had had almost no reason to visit this place.

Now, however, it held only one, and he found himself visiting more and more often.

The raid on Page's apartment had unearthed a large amount of information, but none of it conclusive and none of it incriminating to anyone but Page himself, who was rather beyond Earthly punishment. Finally, after a month of searching, Hellsing had the name of a second member of the railroad. In a rare break with tradition, Hellsing had taken them alive for questioning. Sir Integra declared she was ready to use whatever methods necessary to get information about the railroad out of this second member – a middle-aged woman who owned a safehouse in Dover – and one of those included the potential for Alucard to work his way into the woman's mind using an extension of his new-found powers. To this end Integra had given Alucard two days to try and learn how to do this before she went ahead with more 'inefficient' methods.

"What's the hurry?" he had grumbled when she gave him his orders.

Integra had tetchily informed him that they believed Page had ordered the railroad to close down, at least temporarily, before his death. "This is a trail that is on the verge of going very cold very quickly," she had said with a steely glint in her eye. "And I'm damned if I'm going to let these people slip through my fingers."

Alucard always thought his master was at her most wonderful when she was this determined, and had not wanted to unduly disappoint her with his opinion that, after thirty years, he'd be lucky to get anything at all out of his last soul.

Up ahead, Alucard spied a small smudge of light and colour – the only other entity in this barren place. By some quirk of the geometry of the cell, the walk over there seemed to take hours and mere seconds at the same time.

"Hello, Schrödinger," he said.

The young boy looked up from where he was lying, toying with a button he had pulled off of his now rather ragged uniform, but said nothing.

Alucard fished around in his pocket, and pulled out a pair of thumbscrews.

"Now then," he said jovially, "we can do this one of either two ways. The easy way...or the _very_ easy way."

* * *

It is often quite amazing how the simplest of assumptions can lead to the most far-reaching of consequences.

While the most famous casualty of the Long Night was of course the city of London, with over half of its population slaughtered at the vengeful hands of the Last Battalion, the United Kingdom was by no means the only casualty of that night. Organisations such as NATO exist for a reason, and the Major had been more than smart enough to realise that any attacks on the UK would be met with swift reprisals from European and American troops. To that end, diversionary attacks were orchestrated across the European continent, tying up anyone who might have come to the aid of the increasingly desperate English. 'Terrorist' bombs exploded across Paris, the Reichstag burned for a second time, military bases came under attack from inhuman enemies and communication hubs were systematically disabled.

This, however, still left America to be dealt with. Here, Millennium had less of a foothold and it was decided that a decapitation strike on the US government would be the best option. Presidential aides were bribed with promises of eternal life, and as a result the entire cabinet was dead within minutes of Sealion 2 beginning.

It was at this point that a fateful decision was made. The USA had, since the 19th century, contracted out its supernatural defence to the Vatican, in the form of Iscariot's American branch. However, recent tensions between the White House and Vatican City over Iscariot's perceived heavy-handed approach had lead to a cooling of relations between the two powers. In addition to that, the head of Iscariot, Enrico Maxwell, feared that any American interference in London would steal glory from his 9th crusade. As a result, as vampires ran riot through the halls of the US government, Maxwell gave the order to 'contain, but not arrest'. In short, Iscariot sat back and watched as Washington burned.

The effect on the survivors of the Washington massacre was electric. The President vowed there and then that Americans would never again be dependent upon some foreign power for their defence against the supernatural. In a display of hostility that stunned a Vatican already reeling after the catastrophic conclusion of the 9th crusade, several members of the American branch were arrested upon charges of terrorism. Most were deported back to Europe, although a few were made to serve lengthy prison sentences.

The upshot of all of this was that, within days of the Long Night, with most of the government still in tatters and the nation in mourning, Perseus was born.

Veiled behind a curtain of ultra-black security clearances and answerable to the president himself, Perseus' mandate was simple – defend America, her citizens and her interests, from any and all supernatural threats. Small, well-funded and utterly ruthless, Perseus set about its task with incredible zeal. Within ten years, Perseus became a dreaded word on the north American continent. Vampires would be woken at midday by a knock on the door and never seen again. The Wendigo polities of the boreal forests were cowed and broken. Rumours began to circulate of the strange and terrible technology Perseus commanded, and of where they might have procured it.

It was at this point that Hellsing and Iscariot made their assumption. Both were still struggling with vampirism in Europe, and had no time to worry about the rest of the world. If they ever thought of what may be happening across the Atlantic, both assumed the other was dealing with it. Hellsing imagined that Iscariot had made amends and was active once more in the US, while Iscariot supposed that Washington must have made a deal with the Royal Order. To be fair to both Sir Hellsing and Cardinal M'quve, it was an easy assumption to make. Perseus was hidden from prying eyes behind a nightmare of red tape and bureaucratic cubbyholes inside an increasingly paranoid and insular government that liked to give nothing away, and for over twenty years it concerned itself solely with domestic security.

But, even after the destabilising effects of the Long Night, the United States was still a superpower with global interests. And slowly, eventually, Perseus would begin to turn its gaze upon the rest of the world.

* * *

It had been over thirty six hours now and, just as Alucard had suspected, Schrödinger had steadfastly refused to say a word. In fact, the only noise he had made at all was a small giggle as Alucard had worked the thumbscrews. Other than that, nothing. Schrödinger simply sat cross-legged on the floor, his fingers now blood-soaked ruins. He cocked his head and twitched one of his ears, smiling up at his jailer. _What will you do now, Alucard_, his expression seemed to ask, _what will you try this time?_

"Nothing," Alucard growled in reply to the implicit question. "I'm sick of wasting my time with you. I could be hunting down my master's enemies, and instead I am performing this pointless interrogation on the last member of Millennium – the remnant of the remnant, who couldn't even do the job he was designed to do. Farewell, _boy_. I doubt I shall bother with you again." He gave a snort of disgust, and began to walk away.

He was about ten paces away when Schrödinger spoke.

"If this is indeed goodbye, then I suppose there are one or two things I should tell you, _Vlad_."

Alucard turned around. It was not in his nature to be eagerly hopeful, but he had not relished the prospect of returning to Integra empty-handed.

"Three things, actually," continued the catboy, with a grin. His voice was a dry rasp after thirty years of disuse, with little remaining of his German accent.

"Firstly, your interrogation techniques are fundamentally flawed. You probably figured that already, but I thought I'd point that out – as a general rule, the person you're torturing shouldn't look upon their torture as the most fun they've had in a while. But that's not the important one.

"Secondly, I've finally worked out how to defeat you."

There was dead silence for a few seconds. Then Alucard began to laugh. He howled and roared with laughter, the chamber echoing with the sound, producing a hollow booming noise like God himself was joining in on the joke.

Finally, he got himself under control.

"You?" he asked, gasping for breath. "You think _you_ have a chance? To kill me, from this place? It is truly a shame you chose to throw your lot in with Millennium, boy – I think you could have forged quite a career in stand-up comedy."

"I said _defeat_. Not kill," murmured Schrödinger.

Alucard's smiled lessened, ever so slightly. "Oh, go on then. Humour me, boy, and tell all."

"Do you remember all those years ago, when you first tried to open a window into my mind?"asked Schrödinger, with the expression of a teacher lecturing an errant pupil. "Well, you can look through a window both ways. And one thing I found out is that for you, even death is a victory of sorts, isn't it? But to actually defeat you, to render you harmless and broken...yes, it can be done.

"But that's not the most important thing, either. So listen carefully, no-life king. I don't know where this place you've left me to rot in actually is. Somewhere outside of reality, I suppose, and I know more than most that that's hard to get to. But there are places here where the divide between here and there is thinner. I haven't been idle, these past three decades. I've been _listening_."

There was something unsettling in the boy's expression now.

"I haven't heard much. Just a word, a fragment of a sentence here and there. But it's enough. Enough to know that _something_ is coming. Something monstrous and old and utterly insane. You thought Millennium was bad? You thought we hurt you, that the mad Major and his thousand vampires were the worst thing you ever had to face?"

And now Alucard was convinced that the boy had lost his mind completely, as what he said made no sense in any language Alucard had ever heard.

"_Cthulhu fhtagn._"

* * *

_February, 2031_

The NSC, or National Security Council, was originally set up in order to better allow the various state departments of the United States government to coordinate in the face of growing threat from the USSR, back when the Cold War was just starting. In the eighty years since its inception, its overall purpose had not largely changed, although its make-up had. New departments were given seats, old seats were re-assigned as the structure of government changed, but the NSC itself always remained on hand, its members doing their best to advise the President in any time of crisis.

On this cold day in early February, with the sun still low over the horizon, most of its members had initially no idea why they had been called. It was only as they met and greeted one another, filing into the Situation Room underneath the White House where the President sat waiting, that some of them began to put two and two together.

Within the US government, knowledge of the supernatural is a very closely guarded secret. Very few know that the human world is beset on all sides by the otherworldly, even those who would otherwise have access to almost every secret in the books. It couldn't help escape those members of the NSC who met that day that only those who knew of vampires and demons were the ones who had been summoned by the President. Their suspicions were confirmed a few minutes later as the Director-General of Perseus joined them.

The Director-General was a man named Thomas Redfield, and at first glance he could be mistaken for a Harvard professor. Middle-aged, with unruly, greying hair, wire-framed spectacles and dressed in a tweed jacket rather than the more conventional business suit, he certainly looked like he would be more at home lecturing on Ancient Rome or sat next to a pile of battered textbooks rather than in the minimalist, almost antiseptic environment of the Situation Room with its modern glass conference table, sleek leather chairs, banks of television screens and hologram projectors. Indeed, most people meeting him for the first time were quick to ascribe a scholarly disposition to him, and consequently a mildness of temperament that couldn't be more wrong. Redfield was renowned for his utter hatred and contempt for vampires, along with the other occult creatures that inhabited his home continent.

It was a view that all those in the room shared. They had all been alive during the Long Night. The younger ones had seen the Capitol building in flames on their televisions that night, had heard the news reports the following morning speaking of thousands dead in Washington and millions more across the Atlantic. Most of the older ones had survived the crisis directly, fleeing the corridors of power in the face of some terrible enemy that most had thought was just something to frighten children with. They had lost friends, lost family, and had vowed not to let such an atrocity go unpunished.

Redfield was followed into the room by his deputy, Alec Snowdon, who was in many ways quite the opposite of his boss. Tall, cadaverous and dressed in a black suit, he distinctly resembled an undertaker. As with his boss, thought, his appearance was at odds with his personality. Those who knew both of them agreed that he was a much more genial person than his cold and distant superior.

The two men from Perseus took their seats, and the President called the meeting to order.

"Ladies, gentlemen," he said, "I've asked you here today in order to hear a quite remarkable proposition that has recently been put to me by members of Perseus. I want to know what you all think of it, whether it should go ahead and what its consequences may be. So without further ado, I'll ask Mr Redfield to take it from here."

"Thank you, Mr President," said Redfield, in a voice that had all the gratitude of stone. He turned slightly, and began addressing the council at large. "When my deputy, Mr Snowdon, came to me some time ago with this proposal, I must admit I was rather incredulous. However, further study has convinced me that it is indeed quite feasible and, in light of recent events, we may even have an obligation to undertake it. Mr Snowdon, if you would."

As Snowdon rose to his feet, many sat around the table took note of the Director-General's choice of words. For all his talk of obligations, he seemed determined to make it clear that this idea was that of his deputy.

Snowdon stood next to a screen that covered the entire back wall of the room. At a gesture from him, it flickered into life. The images it showed was grainy, black-and-white, slightly out of focus. None of that mattered, though – what it was depicting was clear enough. A ruined street, looked at from slightly above and to one side. Gutted buildings, smashed shopfronts and the odd dead body littered the foreground. None of the members of the council paid this much attention, though, as the real drama unfolded in the background.

Further up the street was a cluster of men, all wearing brilliant white robes and strange, pointed hats. They were rushing around frantically, seemingly trying to form up in the face of some unseen enemy.

Snowdon paused the video.

"What you are watching," he said, "is the final moments of some of the Knights of Malta, a military adjunct to the Vatican. Once numbering almost two and a half thousand members, it supplied the majority of the troops for Maxwell's ninth crusade. It's widely believed that the crusade was destroyed primarily by Last Battalion forces, but Perseus now knows this not to be the case. This is CCTV footage from the Long Night, and in it, you will be able to see for yourselves something Perseus has suspected for some time now."

The video resumed playing. The men in white continued their desperate scurrying, and began to fire at something that was still off-screen. Then, suddenly, sweeping in from the left, it emerged. A monstrous wave, a rush of black that swept down the road, bearing down on the knights and towards the camera. A few knights turned to run, but most stood their ground, firing wildly into the encroaching mass. It did them no good. In seconds they had all been overrun, subsumed by that darkness which rushed onwards. As it approached the camera, the members of the council began to see that it was not a wave, not water at all, but seemingly made out of hundreds of thousands of separate, swirling shapes.

"What...what is that?" asked the Secretary of State, in a voice that suggested she wasn't looking forward to the answer.

Snowdon said nothing, but paused the video just before the tide reached the camera. At this distance, it was clear – the wave was actually a crowd of people, hundreds of thousands of them, dressed in every style imaginable, carrying a range of weapons from scythes to carbines, all of them sweeping forward with terrible speed.

"That," he replied, "is what really killed the ninth crusade. That is what finished the Last Battalion, and ended the London War. That is Hellsing's trump card. _That_ is the vampire Alucard."

The effect of the name on the council was profound. All at once, everyone seemed to be talking over one another. The President however said nothing, but simply held up his hand for quiet. One by one, the other members of the council fell silent and turned to look at him.

"Thank you," he said, when it was quiet enough to hear the hum of the air conditioning. "Now, Mr Snowdon, perhaps you could explain to us how this has anything to do with Alucard." He spoke the name as if it had a bitter taste, and for many gathered there it did – Hellsing's use of vampires for its own ends was regarded with distaste in Washington. Perseus, and Redfield in particular, found it downright suspicious, tantamount almost to collaboration.

"Gladly, sir. It is really rather simple. Vampires consume the souls of their victims when they drink their blood, which is of course what produces ghouls. Quite what happens to the soul in question afterwards we have never been completely clear upon, but the theory that they are used as a sort of 'insurance policy' has gained a lot of currency over the years. It's the reason why, if you shoot a vampire in the head, it doesn't usually die. You don't kill the vampire, you just destroy one of the souls it has already taken."

The Vice President pointed to the river of bodies on the screen. "So these are all the souls inside him?" he asked.

Snowdon smiled. "Yes, sir. Alucard seems to be unique amongst vampires in that he is able to summon these souls to fight for him in the form of an army of ghouls. He is also unique amongst vampires in the sheer number of souls he contains. We cannot be certain, but based upon his age and footage from London, we estimate the number of souls inside him to number in the millions."

Now the President spoke again. "Hold on, Mr Snowdon. I can't help but notice that you're talking about him in the present tense. I thought Alucard disappeared during the Long Night."

"It is true that he has not been seen or heard much these past thirty years," admitted Snowdon. "We guessed that he'd somehow slipped Hellsing's leash and escaped, possibly back to Eastern Europe. However, we recently received intelligence that Alucard is still in England, and still under the full control of Hellsing."

The screen changed again, this time showing the CCTV footage from the Shard lobby. Snowdon waited patiently until the second hubbub had died down, and fielded the expected and increasingly concerned questions about how could they be _sure_ it was Alucard.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, for my proposition. We don't need necessarily to commit anything to paper here, just getting a general feel for your reactions to it will be enough. The fact remains that Hellsing keeps locked up inside its tame monster about three million souls that it doesn't really do anything with. I don't need to tell you just how devastating an army of three million perfectly obedient soldiers would be – just ask the ninth crusade.

"Alucard is a war waiting to happen. But imagine what could be done with that army if it was placed in the right hands. And that is what I am putting forward here. Operation Orpheus, we call it. I propose, in effect, that we steal Alucard's souls."

* * *

Five days later, Redfield sat in his office and wondered whether he had done the right thing.

Those who knew him would have been astounded at such a thing. The Director-General of Perseus was not a man given to episodes of self-doubt. Such was his reputation for steadfastness that it was said in Washington that if Thomas Redfield decided to argue your case then you would have an ally until the end of time itself. But now, after the meeting of the NSC, he was beginning to wonder whether letting Snowdon even draft this 'contingency', as they had called it all those years ago when Alucard was some distant thing they were confident of never having to face, was such a good idea. There seemed so much potential for things to go wrong.

The intercom on his desk buzzed, the word 'secretary' illuminating. "Yes?" he asked.

"Dr Matthias is here, sir," came the voice of his secretary. "Shall I send him in?"

Redfield smiled. _Everything will be fine_, he chided himself. "At once," he said into the intercom, and cut the connection.

A few seconds later, his office door opened and a man walked in. He was dressed in an impeccably neat Edwardian era suit, along with white cotton gloves and a short top hat. An ebony cane completed the picture of a man who had just strolled in from the 1900s. By his attire alone, one would be hard pressed to guess that Dr Matthias was one of the finest operatives of Perseus, and not some turn-of-the-century diplomat.

His face, however, was a different matter.

Put simply, Dr Matthias had no face. In the gap between the brim of his hat and the top of his collar, there was instead a gunmetal-grey helmet that closely resembled a bird's skull. Two blank red lenses regarded the Director-General impassively from above a short, hooked, beak-like protrusion that was studded along its length with small rivets.

Most of Perseus' new recruits, upon meeting Matthias and those like him for the first time, often insisted upon believing that behind the metal and glass there must be a human face, a skull of bone and a brain served by nerves and blood vessels. The truth was far stranger. Dr Matthias was a member of the group of elite Perseus members known as the Iatromechanical Agents, and there was not a cell nor fragment of bone nor anything else organic in his body.

"It's good to see you again, Matthias." The Director-General was the only member of Perseus who could get away with not using the honorific 'doctor'.

"Likewise." Matthias' voice was an electronic buzz, carefully modulated to emulate human speech. "Now, sir, you asked me here for a report on the current strength of the Quebec polity-"

"Actually, Matthias, that's not why you're here at all," interrupted Redfield.

Matthias fell silent and cocked his head slightly to one side. His blood-red lenses glimmered as they caught the light.

"Officially, yes, I am asking you for a detailed report on the wendigo polity, including your personal opinions on their military strength and political power. But that's just if anyone goes through the records and wonders why I wanted a private meeting with the most powerful Iatromech we have."

If Matthias noticed the compliment, he did not show it. "And the real purpose?" he asked.

"Have you ever heard of Operation Orpheus?"

Matthias paused. Inside his head, complex quantum algorithms began to put two and two together.

"I have heard rumours. Some contingency method for dealing with Alucard, should Hellsing ever become a threat. But Alucard has been gone thirty years and Hellsing has made no threatening moves, as far as I am aware – indeed, I doubt they even know of our existence. Has either situation changed?"

"Alucard has returned," replied Redfield. "And we need soldiers for our war against the wendigo. Mr Snowdon has come up with a way to use one to solve the other."

Briefly, he outlined the plan behind Orpheus. Matthias listened intently, not moving in the slightest. Anyone else might have been put off by it, but Redfield had known him for long enough to know that he held Matthias' full attention.

"Now you see why I called you,"said Redfield once he had finished his explanation. "This is a project of utmost sensitivity, and I want you heading it. I'm entrusting you with a lot of free reign over the exact nature and location of our diversion, but there can be no mistakes, Matthias. If at all possible, Hellsing should not even know of our involvement."

Dr Matthias slowly flexed his fingers. There was a quiet whir of motors. "As you wish, sir. As you wish."

* * *

_Far away, yet closer than any suspect, in the perpetual twilight of the city under the sea, lumbering figures that look like men but are not go about their business, shambling down crudely fashioned streets and swimming between crooked spires. Some lug great loads from one place to another, bent double by the weight. Some tend to fields of algal growths, and yet others repair the crumbling fabric of the city. It is a Sisyphean task that these latter creatures have been given, for by the time one building is shored up in this decaying place, another is always about to totter. Doorframes rot, masonry succumbs to the attacks of strange petrophagous slimes, the shell-dwellings become brittle and fracture._

_The only building which is not constantly on the verge of ruin is the temple, for it is here that the priests live. They have their own arcane methods of preserving their abodes, and it is not for their subjects to know them. Long ago the workers had begged their new masters for these secrets, but the priesthood simply twitched their tentacles in disdain and ignored them._

_Now, many years later, as the city crumbles and the frail are wracked with sickness, the priests, protected by their alien biology from the toxins that broil around the city waters and poison their terrestrial subjects, hold conclave._

_Sealed in their temple to the Cuttle-god, communicating with blizzards of thought, they reminisce. They speak of the old times, the aeons of anarchy, when the gods plunged across the cosmos and all was chaos in their wake. Yog-sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep, names that have not been spoken in eternities but which once struck terror and glee into the minds of mortals. How wonderful those times were, they say, how splendid the havoc._

_And of course, none was so great a spreader of chaos, none was so splendid a disciple of disorder, as Father Cthulhu._

_But their memories are sour. After the aeons of anarchy, the stars were no longer right. And so the Elder Things rose, with their irreligion and their servitor-armies. It was a time of war between monstrous gods and godlike monsters – and the gods lost. They were cast into the pits the Elder Things fashioned for them. And so the heretics stood guard over the tombs, while the faithful were forced to hide in the cold between the stars._

_But nothing mortal is eternal, and the Elder Things are no more now. So the priests under the sea make their plans._

_[The stars are re-aligning,] says one. [We must be on hand. And humanity must not interfere.]_

_[They are impotent,] scoffs another._

_[No. They are weak, but not without ability.]_

_[Then they must be distracted, their efforts redirected and enfeebled,] declares a third. [There are three who threaten us from the world above the surface. Those who use their God as a weapon, those who wield ab-dead, and those who put their faith in their technology.]_

_[The warriors of God are scattered and weakened. They will not be an issue.]_

_[And the other two?]_

_[The sowing of discord between the two agencies has already been put into motion. An alliance between the two will become...unlikely.]_

_The discussion turns to distractions, how to turn the prying eyes of men away from their true machinations. The debate rages for hours. Outside, the twilight grows darker as the unseen sun slips below the horizon. Weak bioluminescent lamps are lit, and the streets of the city are leached of colour. Finally, as the stars marshal above into positions so very close to those they assumed an epoch ago, decisions are reached._

_[It is decided then,], the priests think as one. [The children of Dagon will be readied for war.]_

_[And across the abyssal mountains, where the children have no influence – let us incite the servitor cults to violence.]_

_[Cthulhu fhtagn.]_

_[Cthulhu fhtagn R'Lyeh.]_


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

_May, 2032_

They had arrived in the early hours of the morning, as the sun was just beginning to crawl over the horizon. A light mist still hung over the land from the day before, lending a vaguely ethereal quality to the air and muffling the growl of their Land Rover's engine as they headed down the lonely road, across the scrubland. Pulling up outside the gates to the compound, six people had gotten out of their off-roader and cut down the guards with MP12 machine guns. The silenced weapons made as much noise as a stifled cough.

After the bodes of the guards had been dragged away, the six figures briefly conferred before five of them sprinted off into the compound, vaulting effortlessly over the 9-foot high gates in a single jump. They raced off at blinding speed into the buildings of the compound, and after a few seconds the first gunshots and screams could be heard.

The sixth man, dressed oddly in an old-fashioned suit and top hat, carrying a cane and wearing a bird-like helmet on his head, turned back towards the car, pausing as he did so to read the words 'RAF Lossiemouth' on a sign next to the guard post. He retrieved a small metal cylinder from the boot of the Land Rover, and then entered the base in the same manner as his companions.

That had been thirty minutes ago and Dr Matthias, now stood in the ruins of the base's control tower, calculated that approximately three quarters of the airbase staff must now be dead.

He himself had laid siege to the control tower – being careful to give the panicked staff ample time to send distress signals – before killing everyone inside. The others would not have been so charitable. As he looked out over the airfield, he could see that the armoury and two hangars were still holding out. Gunfire erupted from the cracks between the furniture that had been piled up to block their doors and windows. Indeed, the soldiers who had holed up in the armoury were even firing anti-tank weapons at their assailants, who were flitting around the building like piranhas around a dying animal.

Matthias walked over to the other side of the control room, which offered a view over the land approach to the airbase. As he did so, he was forced to step around some of the bodies, and he felt some small part of himself rebel at the idea of this operation that had taken the lives of so many people he had sworn to protect. _Do not doubt_, he thought to himself. _Their euthanization was necessary. A doctor must sometimes do some harm to a patient in the process of curing them. _

He remembered, briefly, his first days after his Upgrade. At the time, the creeping sensation that he was a doctor, a surgeon created to excise the tumourthat was the supernatural, had seemed strange. They had told him that this conviction of being a medic was some quirk of the Upgrading which had never been successfully ironed out. After all, Upgrading was a traumatic process. Some minor delusions were considered perfectly acceptable if the end result was an Iatromechanical Agent – indeed, the name itself sprang from this strange phenomenon.

Now, 19 years after his Upgrade, Dr Matthias watched as a line of personnel carriers crested the small hill in front of the airbase and began to head down towards the slope to the gates, which still remained closed. His eyes, seeing in the full spectrum despite their red tint, zoomed in on them, logging registration plates, checking the faces of the drivers against military databases, guessing from how low they were riding how many soldiers each contained.

_The first immunological response has occurred. NK cells approaching infected area._ The analogy seemed to spring fully formed into his head. He flicked open a communications channel, and across the airbase five earpieces sprung obediently into life.

"Army units approaching from the south. Light recon, nothing too serious. I want them taken out, but leave someone to radio back. I want important people to know what's happening here," he commanded.

"Sure thing, doc," came the reply from the one who called himself Ollie. "I'll handle it, don't you worry. Getting kinda bored with these guys anyway."

"You should come over to the ammo dump! This shit isn't boring at all!" came a gleeful cry in response, followed by gunfire and a brief yell.

"Call me when they send tanks, doc," came another.

_Undisciplined children_, thought Matthias as he killed the link. _But useful_.

He chose a seat that hadn't gotten much blood on it, and sat back to await to arrival of a more capable response unit.

Sergeant McCormick was beginning to realise he was in for much more than he'd bargained for.

* * *

He and thirty soldiers from the nearby Elgin barracks had been sent to investigate RAF Lossiemouth after a series of increasingly garbled and frantic transmissions had been picked up from the airbase. One of the aircraft controllers had screamed over and over again that they were under attack, from who they didn't know, and that "it was a massacre down there." After that, the base had gone silent.

He was sat next to the driver of the Jackal APC he was riding, which was at the front of the convoy. Behind them was another Jackal and then three troop lorries. Adequate forces, they had thought back in Elgin, for what would probably not turn out to be the bloodbath that the hysterical radio operator had gone on about. After all, who would be attacking them way out here? But as his APC rumbled over the top of the hill and down towards the airbase, he began to wish they'd brought something a bit heavier than their clapped-out old Jackals.

The base was in ruins. Great holes had been blown in the side of some of the buildings, and several of the hangars were beginning to leak black, oily smoke into the sky. Most of the aircraft that lay outside were wrecked, wings torn off, landing gear shattered and rotor blades bent. The distinctive rattle of gunfire rolled up the slope towards them as the diver pulled the APC to a stop.

"Do you think we should wait for some backup?" the driver asked, turning to the sergeant.

McCormick raised an eyebrow at him. "Can you hear that, soldier?" he asked. "Gunfire. Someone down there's having a hell of a time by the sound of things, and you think we should just sit on our arses up here while our mates down there are getting theirs shot off?" He turned back to the airbase, and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

As he did so, he saw something impossible. A man was running down the central road of the base towards the gates at an impossible speed. He leapt over the gate and began to charge up the hill towards the soldiers, moving at a rate that would have shamed a Jeep. Sergeant McCormick couldn't work out what he was seeing – he was just moving too _fast_...

The man – McCormick could see him clearly now, he was that close, he could see his tousled brown hair and thin face that didn't look older than nineteen – reached the first APC, and McCormick's world exploded.

The APC, all six-and-three-quarter tonnes of it, was sent flying through the air. McCormick was flung from it like a broken doll, crashing to the ground in a patch of gorse. There was a horrible _snap_ as one of his legs shattered, and a fist of pain hammered into his body. The Jackal landed a second later with a tremendous crash before rolling down the hill, shedding broken metal and the bodies of its crew.

Gasping in agony and fighting unconsciousness, McCormick looked around to where the rest of the convoy was parked. A few soldiers had managed to get out of the lorries, but most were still inside. Terrible screams came from within, along with the sound of rending flesh. Those soldiers who had made it out were already dead, lying in pools of their own blood. There had been no gunfire – it had all happened too quickly for anyone to react. Within a minute, every last member of the convoy was dead. McCormick, shivering with the shock of his broken leg, blacked out.

When he came to, the man was standing over him. His earlier estimate had been right. The person who had just slaughtered thirty armed soldiers was a teenage boy, with messy hair and a hint of stubble. The boy's mouth was covered in blood that dripped down his chin, staining his t-shirt, and he grinned at McCormick with teeth like knives.

"Hi there," said the boy, as if this were the most natural situation in the world. He bent down and dragged McCormick semi-upright, causing the broken bones in the sergeant's leg to grind together. McCormick groaned in pain and confusion.

"Hurt, did it?" continued the boy, cheerfully. "Well, never mind. I don't think it'll kill you. Speaking of which, I think I'll leave _you_ for later. I might fancy a snack, after all." He gave another grin, accompanied with a snigger. "The name's Ollie, by the way," he added as he dropped McCormick and began to walk off. "Nice meeting you."

Within seconds, he had sprinted off out of sight. As McCormick lay back, his eyes fell on the second Jackal. This one was still intact, although the same could not be said for the men sprawled inside it. In particular, the radio was still working...

Sergeant McCormick rolled over onto his front and, gritting his teeth, began to crawl towards the Jackal. And from the control tower, Dr Matthias watched him with grim satisfaction.

* * *

Sir Integra was sat in her office when the call came through. She had been reading yet another of the endless reports that seemed to have been generated over the past year as Hellsing slowly but surely hunted down the remaining members of the railroad escape network. This one, a monthly update on the progress of the hunt, had managed the interesting trick of taking twelve pages to say they'd gotten precisely nowhere in the last eight weeks. The last vestiges of the trail had gone cold, the murder of Page scattering the members far and wide as they fled Hellsing's reach. Most had either gone underground or fled to Europe, but a small cohort of the central members was believed to have escaped to America. Sir Integra made a mental note to contact Iscariot over that – she was sure their American branch would be happy to take over from there.

Now that she thought about it, she hadn't actually heard much of said branch of Iscariot since the Long Night. That probably meant they were either doing an excellent job, or had all been killed. Knowing Iscariot, it could be either.

The phone on her desk rang, its shrill tone pushing aside her thoughts. She glanced at the display and frowned. An outside line. Not many people had her office number; normally people were routed through a clerk first. She picked up the receiver.

"Hellsing," she said. "Who is this?"

There was a quiet chuckle from the other end. "I'm glad to see you haven't lost your blunt manner of speaking, m'lady," came the voice of an old acquaintance.

"General Walsh?" asked Sir Integra, in surprise.

"The very same, and come to inform you that you might have some business in Scotland."

At the mention of 'business', Sir Integra's brain stepped up a gear. "What's going on?" she demanded.

The ageing soldier, sat in a mobile command centre two miles south of Elgin, sighed. "We don't rightly know," he admitted, lighting a cigarette. "About two hours ago now we got word of a commotion happening up in the RAF airbase in Lossiemouth. A few panicked transmissions came out, and then it went dead. We sent some men over there to check up on things – figured their comms centre had caught fire or something and it was just a bunch of pilots losing their heads. Only one of those men we sent is still alive now, and he's got a leg broken in three places and terrible internal bleeding."

Sir Integra pulled up a map on her computer and began checking distances from Hellsing Manor to Lossiemouth. "Go on," she said.

"He said his whole convoy – some thirty-odd men, mind you – was attacked and wiped out by a scrawny kid who didn't look like he could win a fight against a sparrow. This boy was fast, impossibly strong and seemed to have a liking for blood."

"How did your man survive?" asked Sir Integra, as she sent an urgent message to two different numbers: _My office. Now._

"Damndest thing," continued the general, pausing to take a drag on his cigarette. "He says the boy just left him. He got the feeling that it wanted him to get a message out, about what was really happening there. Anyway, he radioed back for help and gave the chaps at Elgin barracks an idea of what they were really up against. They knew I was in Edinburgh and that I might know more about this kind of thing than they, so they gave me a ring and up I came. If you ask me, this is pretty damn genuine. And I thought this'd be an excellent opportunity to show off that 'rapid reaction' capability you said you've got now."

Integra smiled as Seras walked up through her office floor. At the same time, Alucard popped back into reality and sat down in one of her chairs. "This sounds like just our kind of thing. I'll send someone over immediately. Good luck, General Walsh."

"You too, Sir Integra. Oh, and one more thing: that soldier who got bashed about was a personal friend, and the medics say he may not make it. Don't go easy on the bastards."

And with that, the general hung up. Sir Integra did likewise, before turning to the two vampires sat before her. "All right, you two. This is urgent: there's been a massive attack on an RAF facility in Scotland. Lossiemouth airbase, it's called. Vampires are almost certainly involved. Alucard, get up there immediately and find out what's going on. Seras, get whatever you think you'll need and meet me at the helipad in five minutes."

Alucard nodded. "The dead ride fast," he murmured, and vanished.

* * *

In the control tower at Lossiemouth, Dr Matthias checked his watch. It had been two hours since the attack started now, and an hour and a half since the investigating soldiers had all been killed. He gave Hellsing another quarter of an hour before getting wind of the attack, and at least 45 minutes to travel up to Scotland.

And after that, then his work could begin in earnest.

He listened in on the open channel that connected his five 'employees'. Once again, they were babbling on about how magnificent vampirism was. They'd finally made it inside one of the hangars, and the crunches and screams of the dying men inside provided a chilling background to their words.

For all their bravado, Matthias remembered clearly what they had been just one year ago – desperate and lonely people, teenagers mostly, hanging around on some of the darker forums of the internet swapping conspiracy theories about the Long Night and depraved fantasies about being vampires themselves. Carefully, he and the other members of Operation Orpheus had targeted the most unstable ones, painstakingly stroking and inflating egos, before finally offering to meet them in person with a most remarkable proposition.

Said proposition had been the offer of vampirism, now attainable via surgery rather than the more slapdash methods of earlier generations. Most had – sensibly, in Matthias' eyes – turned the offer down once they realised they were in over their heads. These ones were quickly silenced. A few, six in total, had taken up the offer and became the first artificial vampires built for thirty years.

Right from the start, there were problems. One, a stocky boy called Paul, had immediately gone on a rampage the minute he was revived from the operation, stupidly assuming that Perseus would create a vampire stronger than they were. Matthias had killed him in front of the other five, driving his cane through the boy's heart. There had been no disobedience after that.

That left five, all both emotionally and biologically unstable. There had been near-misses where only the quick work of other operatives working on Orpheus had prevented word of the five getting out. There had been murders – one girl had killed her parents. There had been tissue rejections, necessitating emergency surgery. But the five decoys of Orpheus had pulled through, and would soon be pitted against the best Hellsing had to offer, which Matthias had worked hard to shelter them from.

He did not rate their chances.

Suddenly, the line crackled into life. "Hey, look at this dickhead!" came a voice over the open channel. Matthias recognised it as belonging to a particularly obnoxious individual called Andrew. "Just wandering around outside! Hey! You lost?" there was the sound of laughter, which was abruptly cut short by the roar of a gunshot. Inside Matthias' HUD, a small message popped up: [Subject: Andrew Carter – Terminated]. The braying laughter had been replaced by a quiet, wet bubbling sound and the radio channel was suddenly alive with a chorus of "what was _that_?"

If Matthias could have blinked in surprise, he would have. _T-cell response – earlier than we expected. They must have already been operating nearby. But why didn't we know?_ He shook his head slightly, dismissing those thoughts as he issued orders over the earpieces his decoys carried. Below him, the four remaining vampires began to spread out, suddenly wary, trying to find Andrew's killer. Matthias paid them little attention, but instead reached underneath his seat and brought out a cylindrical object about the same size and dimensions as a tennis ball-tube. One end was covered with small lights and readouts. The other had a nasty-looking three-pronged claw sticking out of it.

Matthias flicked a switch on the device's top to it's 'on' position. There was a quiet whine of charging capacitors, before a small speaker next to the switch piped up.

"This cask is now in readiness," it said.

* * *

It took Alucard half an hour to finally hunt down the last of the vampires that had been running riot throughout the base, but by the time he had finished he was thoroughly enjoying himself. Now, he stood over the last one – a boy with tousled brown hair – and watched as it tried pathetically to crawl away, whimpering as it left a trail of blood and intestines behind it. Alucard took a step forward and brought his foot down on the boy's guts, stopping him from going any further. The young vampire slobbered in pain, his jaw working wordlessly as he still tried to scrabble out of Alucard's reach.

"Now this," said Alucard in a tone that sounded almost kind, "this is the bit of the job I don't like as much, mostly because it involves me not fighting you. But I suppose I can't complain." He leant in further. "So, who put you up to this, child? Is this your doing – or are you merely the agent of some higher power?"

The boy's face twisted into a snarl and he gasped a string of curses at Alucard. The no-life king blinked, nonplussed, and reached down and tore off one of his captive's arms. Once the boy had stopped screaming, Alucard repeated his question. This time, answers were more forthcoming.

"The fucking doctor, that's who it was, that bastard," gasped the boy. "Turned us into vampires, promised us immortality, told us all we had to do in return was attack this place. Goddamn freak. Bloody freak in his mask. Sitting up there while we get our guts torn out..."

There was the crack of a gunshot, and Alucard felt the whisper of a bullet tearing through the air as it passed him by. The boy's head snapped back, a dark hole appearing in his forehead, and collapsed, twitching as he died.

Alucard whirled round, and was confronted with a figure from his childhood.

When he had been a young boy, so many centuries ago now, a terrible plague had briefly swept through Wallachia. The sickness had struck down thousands, turning healthy men into suppurating, vomiting wrecks that could barely speak. Even the royal household had not been safe, with servants and even two members of the royal family being infected. And into this time of pestilence had come the plague doctors.

Clad from head to toe in black, wearing their distinctive 'bird-masks' with red lenses and herb-filled beaks to ward off the illness, they had travelled from house to house, handing out what medicines they could conjure up. One had even visited the house of the Voivode to tend to the dying servants. Alucard would never forget that visit. The plague doctor had been silent, sinister, barely speaking a word to anyone, not even the king himself. He passed through the rooms like a judging angel of death – this one may yet live, this one has but a few days, this one will not even survive the night.

And here before him was a latter-day _Pestarzt_, a plague doctor of the modern age. He wore a suit instead of robes, the mask was now a glimmering grey helmet and he carried an ebony cane rather than a stick made of willow wood, but the soulless red lenses still gazed out at Alucard like they had on that dreadful night five hundred years ago. A small pistol nestled in his hand, smoke curling lazily from the barrel.

"It seems all I ever fight these days are throwbacks and relics," said Alucard, mournfully. "Even my new enemies seem to harken back to better days. So, pestilent doctor, have you come to cure me? Are you the one who sent these pathetic excuses for midians against me? Hmm? Or have I got it all wrong, that there's an explanation for all this and you are actually an ally of mine?"

The man said nothing, but raised his cane. Two gleaming blades shot out of either end with a quiet _click_.

Alucard smiled. "I do so love it when I'm right," he laughed, drew his Casull and fired a volley of shots at the doctor.

* * *

_Say nothing_, thought Dr Matthias as he leapt out of the path of the bullets, _keep him fighting. Let him run out of ammo._

He had planned to fight Alucard in close quarters where he could easily get within range, but he had been forced to intervene when it looked like Oliver was going to say more than he was supposed to. An open area of tarmac wasn't where he wanted to fight – there was too much room, too many opportunities for his quarry to pull back out of reach.

He landed on all fours as the Casull's bullets chewed up the tarmac behind him in spurts of dust. He fired a corresponding volley from his Glock pistol, although he didn't expect it to do much against Alucard – the silver-tipped bullets he carried might have some stopping power against normal vampires, but against the no-life king he might as well throw pebbles.

He watched the bullets hit home, tearing large holes in Alucard's face and neck. He knew what to expect next – the flesh would begin to heal, like a film run in reverse. Blood would flow back, bones re-knit and Alucard would stand undamaged before him again. Which is why what happened next came as such a complete surprise.

Instead of the healing Matthias expected, Alucard flickered. For the briefest moment, it was as if he was not there at all, as if he had simply ceased to exist entirely. Then he reappeared, solid, whole and completely uninjured. The whole process took less than half a second and Matthias, even though he saw the world through incredibly sensitive eyes, barely saw it himself. He stared in shock at Alucard's sneering, unmarked face.

All in all, he only hesitated for the briefest moment. It still cost him dearly. Alucard's arm jumped round – moving from his side to pointed right at Matthias, skipping out the space in between – and he emptied the rest of the Casull's clip into Matthias' chest. The doctor was hurled backwards, blown off his feet by the force of the bullets. They slammed through his outer armour plating, opening holes through which bright blue armour-gel began to leak. Error messages and damage reports began to flash across his vision as the shockwaves from the impacts crumpled gears and shattered circuitry. He collapsed backwards in a shower of twisted metal and gobbets of armour-gel, warning klaxons that only he could hear screaming in his ears.

* * *

As the body of the doctor crashed to the ground, Alucard rooted in his pockets for another clip for the Casull. _Impressive_, he thought. _Armour-piercing technology has certainly come a long way in thirty years._ His search turned up nothing – he had wasted most of his ammunition on the vampires – and he briefly considered going back to Hellsing Manor for some more clips. It would only take a second, after all.

Across the tarmac, the body of the doctor smoked and twitched, emitting a small shower of sparks. Alucard decided not to bother with that ammo. _This dog is gone, anyway – and it's not even a dog. Sending robots now, are we? I remember when my enemies were worth my time._ Shaking his head, he strode over to where the wreck lay, intending to finish the job with his bare hands.

He was drawing back his fist, intending to tear through that steel exoskeleton and ruin the machine's silicon heart, when it made its move. Arching its back, the machine somersaulted to its feet as he brought his hand down, neatly sidestepping the blow and bringing its bladed cane down on his arm. The monofilament blade met almost no resistance, carving through flesh and sinews and bone with practised ease. Alucard was left with a gushing stump where his right arm had been seconds before as the machine whirled round, brandished the cane and drove it deep into his chest.

For a brief moment, the only sound was the drip of blood and the occasional fizz of sparks inside the doctor-robot's ruined chest. Then Alucard began to laugh. "Excellent!" he cried, as the robot looked at him almost quizzically. "You might be worth my time after all."

* * *

High above Edinburgh, a strange aircraft tore northwards. It looked rather like a cross between a helicopter and a jet plane, with a sleek, streamlined body, stubby swept-forward wings and two large rotor blades chewing the air above it. A pair of large turbofans propelled it forwards, mounted at the end of each wing.

The aircraft was called a gyrodyne, and it was the latest acquisition of the Hellsing Organisation. Travelling at speeds faster than any commercial jet and with full VTOL capability, the gyrodyne was used to transport Hellsing members quickly around the country. Today, its pilot was ferrying some very important passengers towards RAF Lossiemouth.

In the luxurious passenger compartment, Sir Integra Hellsing was desperately attempting to co-ordinate with several members of the military's high command on one line, while trying to remain involved in a debate erupting in the Convention of Twelve on another, and emergency session of which had been called after news of the attack broke. Most people would have probably given up on one or the other after a short while of holding a telephone to each ear, but by all accounts Sir Integra was carrying it off with all the aplomb she could muster.

"And _I _am telling _you_, Sir Penwood, that we cannot risk sending in anyone until we get confirmation from my agents that the area is free of hostiles," she was saying. "Unless you are willing to pay a visit to the families of the deceased in person?"

That shut Sir Penwood up for a few seconds, allowing the more level-headed and cautious Sir Irons to take control of the debate. Integra decided that she cold probably leave the situation in London in his hands, and turned her attention to the military top brass, who were also beginning to wonder why they couldn't just charge in and 'show those blighters what for'.

Across the aisle from her master, Seras Victoria sat in a pensive silence. It had been thirty-five minutes since the call had come through and she had hurried up to the Director's office, half and hour since she and Sir Integra had scrambled aboard the gyrodyne and hurried north in Alucard's wake. On the face of it, there was little to distinguish this particular mission from any of the others she'd undertaken in her thirty-odd years at Hellsing, apart from its severity. But as they carried on, Seras had begun to feel a sense of dread, a sense that things were not as they should be.

_Something's terribly wrong_, she thought to herself. _I feel like there's something _waiting_ for us up there._

Their pilot announced that they were now over Perth, and would shortly begin their descent.

* * *

Alucard brought his other fist around, and slammed it against the doctor's head with such force that he broke his fingers. The machine jerked backwards with a dull clang and pulled its cane free of his chest. Alucard followed his punch with a kick to the thing's abdomen, feeling metal crunch and armour-gel spatter as his foot drove through its shell like he was crushing a beetle.

Instead of trying to get out of range, the doctor instead ducked his next blow and dove forwards, coming to a halt just in front of Alucard's face. For the briefest moment, he was staring into its blank, blood-red eyes. Suddenly, the doctor spoke.

"Got you," it said, its voice a metallic croak.

And before Alucard could do anything, there was a searing pain in his chest, and his view dissolved into white light.

* * *

Alucard collapsed to the ground, and Dr Matthias did likewise. On his hands and knees, leaking hydraulic fluids and armour-gel, he nonetheless felt he had a legitimate claim to victory. For sticking out of the vampire's chest like a high-tech stake was the cask, its three-pronged claw dug firmly into the flesh. One by one, the lights on its top turned green.

"Cromwell Approval system noted. Counter-routines initiated," chirped the cask, as it started the job it was designed for. Matthias sat back and watched over a year's hard work come to fruition as he did what repairs to his broken body that he could.

The cask was the pinnacle of Perseus' soul-extraction technology and, as the first self-contained removal unit, was the core of Operation Orpheus . Removing a soul from its body of residence was perfectly possible, but the required removal units were huge and required tremendous amounts of electrical energy and computing power. This cask had in some ways an easier job. After all, it did not have to remove the native soul, only the other ones that the body had absorbed over the centuries. Nevertheless, it still had its work cut out for it, as it had to remove not just one but millions of souls, and prevent them from blending together into one amorphous mass as it did so.

The cask continued to burble to itself. "Control Art System overrides engaged. Releasing to level three, level two, level one...level zero...zero...zero. Extraction processes initiated."

Matthias began to contact other members of the Orpheus team, starting with those responsible for his extraction. An escape route out of the country had been one of the first things the members of Operation Orpheus had planned, and now Matthias set about activating his.

"Extraction process completed. All free radicals transferred. Re-establishing Control Art System. System reconstructed to base level. Disengaging locks. Clamp release. Preserve mode now in effect."

Matthias looked around in surprise as the cask went through its shutdown cycles far sooner than he had expected. He released the cask's claw and pulled it free of Alucard's twitching body, a small wisp of smoke rising from where it had been attached to the vampire's skin. Checking all the readouts, Matthias saw that the cask appeared to have functioned perfectly, if a little quickly. Still, even if there had been a malfunction, there was nothing he could do about it.

Scooping up the cask, he stepped over Alucard and began to run towards the airbase's helicopter hangars.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Hellsing's gyrodyne touched down at RAF Lossiemouth, disgorging two very worried-looking women. One carried an assault rifle, the other a pistol and a sword. The one with the rifle immediately began scouring the base for any survivors, while the other shouted into a mobile phone, as if desperately trying to get a response out of the person on the other end.

Less than thirty seconds later, the unresponsive party was found collapsed in a heap next to the hangars, dazed and bleeding. It would be over an hour before he would be able to tell of what had happened to him.

Twenty minutes after that, an RAF transport helicopter touched down at Edinburgh International Airport's VTOL pads, to the surprise of many nearby people waiting to board a more conventional aircraft. A well-dressed and obviously badly injured man limped out, and was met by airport security, who hurried him on board a small private jet.

The jet was registered to a Spanish company and quickly took off on a heading for Madrid. Somewhere over the Bay of Biscay the pilot sent a distress call, dipped below radar and turned west towards the Atlantic. The plane would later be reported as lost, with all passengers and crew assumed dead.

Two hours later, the jet touched down on the fight deck of the carrier-sub _USS Kraken_, one of the US Navy's new submersible aircraft carriers. Its precious cargo was hurriedly offloaded, and the plane itself was dumped overboard into the sea.

The _USS Kraken_ sealed its flight bay doors and slid beneath the surface. Leaving barely a ripple in its wake, the carrier-sub turned and headed for home waters.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Sir Integra Hellsing sat back in her chair and swore softly.

It was amazing, she thought, how quickly everything could slip between your fingers. One week ago, things had been as normal as they ever got for the Royal Order. Alucard had shown that he was even more effective with his new quantum-based abilities. The 'railroad' trail had gone cold, but a call to Iscariot's American branch and it would, with a little persuading, no longer be Hellsing's problem. The incident rate was as low as it had ever been, and for a brief time the future had actually looked bright.

Then the utter débâcle that was Lossiemouth had occurred, and everything had collapsed. They'd been attacked, completely out of the blue, by a powerful and capable enemy that commanded technology Hellsing had never even dreamed of. Alucard had been weakened and was now nowhere near as powerful as he had been. The Convention of Twelve was furious with Hellsing over its failure. It was also becoming increasingly hard to cover up what had happened at Lossiemouth – after all, when over a hundred soldiers are killed in less than two hours, people are going to start investigating. And to cap it all, there had been another vampire attack, just last night in Durham, providing a sour coda to one of the worst weeks Integra had ever endured.

If she was honest, though, it wasn't as bad as it sounded. The Convention would come round eventually, although she would have to make sure that some of the more hard-line members like Sir Penwood and Sir Ashcroft did not get the attention of the King too much. The cover-up of Lossiemouth would probably be successful, seeing as how they'd successfully hidden the truth about London for over thirty years now. Durham was just business as usual, and Alucard was still a force to be reckoned with by anyone's standards. With Schrödinger's soul gone, he could begin to build up his own collection again – something which he was looking forward to with great relish.

No, what worried her most was whoever had been behind this attack.

She pushed her chair back and stood up. Shrugging on a warm coat, she began to make her way to the cellars of Hellsing Manor, still mulling the situation over as she did so.

Their attackers had been good, she had to give them that. Their operation had been conducted so as to leave almost no clues behind at all. But there were still a few things she could deduce.

One: they were well-funded. Alucard had spoken of an agile and strong mechanical creature which had attacked him, and she'd seen the CCTV footage of it from the base. Sir Integra rarely paid much attention to the technology pages of the _Times_, but she imagined such a contraption did not come cheap. Neither would that thing they had used to remove Alucard's vassal souls (_soul, singular_, she corrected herself). Thirty years ago, she would have assumed that such a degree of funding meant a government agency, but after Millennium had showed up she could no longer be so certain of that.

Two: they had plans. That much might be obvious, but it was the type of plans they must have that worried her. Her reasoning went something like this: the robot that attacked Alucard would have had ample opportunity to try and kill him after it had removed his vassal soul – he was weak, dazed and largely defenceless. But it had immediately run off, implying that it was the soul was the object of the attack, and not the destruction of Alucard. From that, Sir Integra might have come to the conclusion that Schrödinger's soul was what they were after, were it not for the fact that Hellsing had kept Alucard's new abilities a closely-guarded secret. That would mean that they would not have been after Schrödinger at all – but the millions of souls Alucard had once contained, and which most believed he still did.

And the implications of _that_ were very worrying indeed.

_Someone wants an army_, she thought, as she came to a halt outside a door marked 'Morgue'. Sir Integra pulled out a cigar and lit it, directly underneath a large 'No Smoking' sign. The morgue staff had initially complained about this habit of hers, until she had quietly reminded them who paid their salaries.

She tugged open the large steel door and was met with a blast of cold air that carried the acrid tang of disinfectant. The morgue was always kept close to freezing to preserve its contents, and as she closed the door behind her she was glad for the coat she wore. She was also glad for the cigar. How the staff coped with the reek of preservatives was a mystery to her.

A small man with a shock of ginger hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses was waiting to meet her. His name was Dr Barlow, Hellsing's pathologist, forensics expert and doctor when the need arose. A neat, fastidious man who spent most of his time dissecting bodies under the cold glare of halogen lights, he had served the Hellsing Organisation for the last thirty five years, delivering report after report on the bodies that were inevitably brought back after the soldiers of Hellsing went into battle. He wore a pristine white lab coat that was tinged blue under the harsh lighting.

"Sir Hellsing," he said primly, with only the faintest glower at her cigar. "A pleasure as always."

"What do you have for me, doctor?" Integra asked, deciding to dispense with any pleasantries.

Dr Barlow turned and led her deeper into the morgue, wordlessly handing her an ashtray as he did so. "I've been analysing those five specimens you brought back from Scotland – or, to be more precise, what Alucard left of them. And I must say, the results are more than a little troubling."

They entered the storage room, where the doctor kept his 'specimens'. It was a large room, the walls and floor covered in white tiles. A large system of storage cabinets covered one wall, each door marked with a name, date and location. Another wall was taken up by shelves full of chemicals, while a computer workstation sat on a corner desk. The smell of disinfectant and formaldehyde was even stronger here, and Integra took another drag on her cigar. In the middle of the room, arranged in two rows, were eight autopsy tables. Six were covered with sheets, from under which the familiar outlines of human bodies protruded.

"These five are the ones from Scotland," continued the doctor, pulling the sheets off to reveal five cadavers. All of them had suffered terrible injuries, ranging from gunshot wounds to the head to disembowelment. "I was running some standard tests on them, when I noticed something rather strange. The adverse reaction to allicin – that's the active ingredient in garlic, and a reaction to it is a pretty good litmus test for the presence of vampiric tissue – is present in all five, but proceeds at different rates. Here, I'll show you."

Barlow reached up and took down a small jar of a colourless solution from one of the shelves. Using a pipette, he dropped a few drops onto the forehead of one of the bodies. There was a small fizzing sound as the liquid met the dead flesh, which began to bubble and give off a tendril of smoke. Barlow walked around the body, and added some more of the liquid to the open chest cavity. With a loud hiss the flesh here began to broil and writhe, bubbling like a pan of boiling water. Foul-smelling smoke filled the room, before being sucked away by extractor fans in the ceiling.

"You see?" asked Barlow, replacing the lid on the allicin jar. "A much more violent reaction in some parts of the body than others. It's the same in all five. In each case, it's the same places – areas surrounding the heart, the base of the brain stem, and parts of the small intestine."

"And all this means what?" asked Integra.

Barlow sighed. "These vampires are artificial. Probably created by surgery – implant vampiric tissue in the recipient, presumably in the areas where we see the greater reaction, and let it infect the rest of the body at its leisure. Whoever's done it did a good job, too. Very professional. Now, let me show you something else."

He lead her over to the sixth table, which contained a body in similar condition to the other five. "This is the one from Durham. Came in last night. And it's just the same as those ones: differing reaction rates, same locations." Barlow grinned, his glasses flaring under the halogen bulbs. "And this got me thinking. I decided to test all the specimens I had here – and I've ones on ice from twenty five years ago. Took me all night and most of the morning, and I was only doing the most primitive of tests, so it's possible I've got a few false positives. But even so, I think the results were interesting.

"We've been dealing with artificial vampires for as long as my records go. Now of course, there are still natural ones we've dealt with – about the number we'd expect, actually. But from 2005 to last year, it turns out our agents have brought in quite a few fakes as well. I think that most of the ones in the first ten years will be Millennium derivatives. The fakes are most numerous during that period, certainly. But from 2015, there's been a trickle of man-made ones on top of the real things. And then, last year, they just stopped. No more artificials. That's probably why the records show 2031 as a good year for us: our usual crop of fakes, for some reason, didn't show up. As if the people making them had another project to deal with."

_Good God_, thought Integra.

"I plan to do a more thorough analysis of all the artificial ones as soon as possible," continued Barlow. "Hopefully, I can find out exactly when the Millennium ones peter out and our mysterious production team starts work. But I've no real reason to doubt my initial assessment – that by 2015, our friends were already churning them out at a pretty decent rate."

Integra took a moment to find her voice, she was that shocked by the doctor's news. "And how the _hell_ didn't we notice this sooner?" she demanded at last.

Dr Barlow shrugged apologetically. "We never thought to look. We just assumed that we'd have an upsurge of Millennium derivatives, and then that things would go back to normal. It never occurred to us that someone else would start making vampires as well."

"I sometimes wonder if we learned anything from the Long Night at all," sighed Integra. "Very well, doctor. You have my thanks for bringing this to my attention, although I'd appreciate it if you didn't speak too much of your theories to anyone else until we're absolutely certain of what we're facing." She turned to leave. "And I want that 'thorough analysis' done as soon as possible," she added over her shoulder as she hurried out of the morgue, pausing only to leave her ashtray on one of the desks.

* * *

Five thousand miles distant from Hellsing Manor, across oceans, mountains, forests and deserts, a man stood and watched the sun rise across the hills to the east, spilling its light across the desert flats like a flood. High above him, cirrus clouds gambolled slowly, tinged orange. A bird, nothing more than a dark shape arcing through the sky, gave out a mournful cry and flew on. The sunlight threw the land before him into sharp focus – what had previously been a vague shadow became the razor sharp silhouette of a small grove of trees. Already, the heat of the sun was beginning to seep into him, through his clothes and the exposed metal of his head.

It was a long way from that fateful sunrise over Lossiemouth, one week ago. Now, stood in the Nevada desert some fifty miles from the nearest town, village or collection of trailer homes, Dr Matthias felt the enormous satisfaction of a job well done.

It was a job, however, that had cost him dearly. His operating software had crashed three times on the journey back from Lossiemouth, and was still glitching. His hip joints were wrecked, his chest punctured and one eye lens fractured. Motherboards had smashed, gears slipped their bearing and actuators shorted out. He had spent most of the last week on operating tables as Perseus surgeon-mechanics desperately tried to restore some functionality to him. He was now able to walk again, although combat would be beyond him for some time yet. Redfield had talked to him about assigning him to Internal Security – guard duty, in other words – until he was fully operational again. It was not a prospect Matthias looked forward to.

Nevertheless, Orpheus had been a success – so far, at least. Matthias was even being hailed as the hero of the operation, although he supposed that Deputy Director Snowdon deserved much of the credit. After all, had he not been able to set up a surgical unit with such remarkable speed for Matthias to work with? Not to mention that Orpheus was his idea to begin with.

A message flashed up across his vision: [You had better come inside now, Dr Matthias. Final testing has commenced. – Nathaniel]. Matthias took one last glance at the scenery before him and began to walk, using his cane to help him for the first time in his existence.

* * *

When most people hear the words 'government facility' and 'Nevada', their mind usually goes immediately to the endless rumours surrounding Area 51. The existence of this remote section of Edwards Air Force Base, 83 miles from the lights of Las Vegas, has long been one of the government's worst-kept secrets, and it is a central figure in almost every conspiracy theory that has ever arisen out of the western United States. From Roswell aliens to energy weapons and weather control, almost every experiment, autopsy and sinister activity the theorists can come up with has allegedly been performed in this dusty corner of America.

The reality of Area 51 is almost as fantastic as the speculation. Since its creation in the early 1950s, it has been the home of the U2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird and several of the HAVE reverse-engineering projects in which the USA attempted to figure out just how good the USSR's new fighter jets were. Area 51 was, oddly enough, intended to be declassified as a location in 2003, but after the Long Night it was decided that America was in no hurry to share its secrets with the world. Currently, it is the development site of the new Aurora orbital transport vehicle, which is being built in response to the Chinese Chang-O and British Skylon models.

However, out in the deserts, there is another facility. This one is a far better-kept secret, perhaps by virtue of being much younger than the venerable Area 51, and perhaps because it is run by the most secretive sect of the US government. It is called Installation 4. Operated by Perseus and existing almost entirely underground, Installation 4 is the primary R&D centre of that force against the supernatural. In 2032, it also played host to the final stage of Operation Orpheus.

Dr Nathaniel waited by the main doors to the Installation as Dr Matthias made his slow, limping way back. He was a much younger Iatromech than Matthias, barely three years old, and he was slightly awed by the presence of the wounded, ancient Agent who was the closest thing his kind had to a figure of legend. Dr Matthias had fought the wendigo polities, taken part in the Sasquatch raids and had destroyed more vampires than any other Iatromech on record. Nathaniel couldn't help but feel a little like a young intern working at the side of a master surgeon.

Matthias, for his part, was rather glad of the presence of a fellow Iatromech, as it showed that Orpheus was still considered worth diverting a lot of resources to protect. He also enjoyed it on a more personal level: Dr Nathaniel was one of the first of the new Sentinel-class Iatromechs, which were promised to provide revolutionary levels of dexterity and speed with their new polymer-muscles. Matthias, the last of the Vanguard-class and motivated by much more primitive hydraulics and micro-motors, was interested to see how a third-generation model performed.

As they rode the elevator down the the main chamber of Installation 4, Matthias asked Nathaniel how the final phase was progressing.

"Exactly to schedule," Nathaniel answered, and Matthias couldn't help but notice that the younger Iatromech's voice sounded a lot more human than his own metallic rasp. "They should be just about to finish analysis of the contained souls. Then it'll be a quick confirmation from the Director-General, and we can invoke."

Every soul contains within it a residual memory of the body it used to inhabit. Invocation was the term given by Perseus to flash-growing a new body from that memory and allowing the soul to inhabit it once more.

"And here we are," announced Dr Nathaniel cheerfully, as the elevator dropped into the main chamber.

The chamber was huge, cavernous, like a great cathedral dedicated to some long-lost god of technology. Dimly lit by low-power LED strips that patterned the ceiling, it was filled with row after row of invocation chambers, in which bodies could be stitched together out of a chemical soup in a matter of moments. The endless, mathematical procession of the cylindrical units seemed to play tricks of perspective on the eye, as rows became diagonals became columns as Matthias shifted his gaze around. Each unit had a thick pillar and a sinewy tangle of cables connecting it to the ceiling of the chamber, where great vats of amino acids and calcium ions lay in readiness. A fine mist rolled off their sides and cascaded gently to the floor as their cooling systems froze the moisture out of the air.

The elevator deposited the two Iatromechs next to the control station, where bank after bank of computers blinked and hummed to themselves. The hulking shapes of twelve Cray-IV supercomputers lurked in the background, and Matthias noted with some pride that the cask was plugged into the extraction systems. All but one of its lights glowed a reassuring green.

As the grille of the elevator slid aside, it quickly became apparent that the two Iatromechanical Agents had arrived in the middle of a heated argument. A man in a dark suit was bellowing at a woman in a white coat, who was in turn glaring coldly at him. A brace of technicians stood uneasily on the sidelines.

"Mr Deputy," the woman managed when the man had to pause for breath, "it's really quite simple. The cask has performed flawlessly. There has been no degeneration. The only conclusion is that, unless we have gotten everything wrong these past twenty years, _there was only one soul to begin with_."

The man began to shout again, about how that was impossible.

"What is the problem?" It was at times like this that Matthias was glad for his inhuman voice. It certainly made everyone take note of him.

The suited man turned around, revealing himself to be Deputy Director Snowdon. "Oh. It's you, Matthias. Look, I'm rather busy here. Shouldn't you be in the medical bay or something?" he asked distractedly, and turned back to the woman he had been shouting at. Insofar as he was able to, Matthias glared at the deputy director, who had been acting strangely short-tempered towards him since he had returned from Scotland.

The woman Snowdon was gearing up to attack again was Dr Norton, Head of Pneumatics, the Perseus division concerned with the transplantation of souls. She sensed that Matthias could be an ally against the increasingly furious deputy director, and moved to address him.

"We've hit a bit of a stumbling block," she began.

* * *

"_One?_" Director-General Redfield's day had gone from excellent to terrible in the span of a single word. He had woken full of hope, knowing that today was the day that he could deliver a perfectly obedient army of millions to the President. Indeed, he had planned to deliver the good news in person, at a White House dinner that very night. Now, utter ruination flickered before him.

_Orpheus cost close to half a billion dollars_, he thought to himself. _How the _hell_ am I going to get this one past the Treasury?_

"You...you're absolutely sure of this?" he asked. He was speaking via secure connection to his deputy in Nevada, holding the telephone to his ear as if his life depended upon it.

"Yes, sir. We've run all the tests. We've double-checked our findings. But it's still the same: there's only one soul in the cask."

The Director-General was silent for a long time. Just when Snowdon was beginning to worry, he spoke.

"Well," he said, "I suppose we'd better invoke this damn soul if we've gone to this much trouble to get it."

* * *

And as the sun rises over Nevada, so the moon rears its ghostly head over the village of Nant Gwrtheyrn. Its cold light glitters off the sea, which champs hungrily at the cliffs on which the village hunkers down. It probes gently across broken stonework, peers in through glassless windows, wafts gossamer fingers of light across the ruins.

Those local to this remote corner of Wales, perched on the fringes of the land, do not like to speak of this place to outsiders. Bring up the topic in a local pub in one of the nearby villages and you will be amazed at how quickly the subject can be changed. Those who say anything at all will usually speak ambiguously, saying "oh, it's such a shame that everyone left. It was a lovely village, you know, but then the quarry went and closed down and the fishing went elsewhere and, well, I guess there wasn't much reason for people to stay on."

But talk to the right person after perhaps just a little too much to drink, and you might hear the tales of the curses of the three monks, of the ghosts that prowl the streets, of the human skeletons found inside trees and the ancient village well. You'll have to be quick, though: it won't be long before someone with a clearer head will join your table and divert the conversation elsewhere. This is a place that keeps its secrets better than most.

Tonight, as the moon soars high and local villagers sit by their hearths, Nant Gwrtheyrn comes back to a parody of life. Hooded figures troop through its weed-strewn streets, picking their way carefully over fallen boulders and broken cobblestones, converging on the well at the centre of the long-deserted village square. They stand around it in concentric circles, mumbling prayers to their god, the Formless One, the all-and-nought, the Shoggoth.

And as they do so, the whispering voices come to them. Flitting across oceans of water and seas of thought, they burrow into their minds and murmur impossible things to them. The voices are calm, almost seductive, but carry an undercurrent of violence, of fury and anticipation. It is a call to war.

_[Arise, arise, arise,]_ they say.

_[Arise, dutiful Cult of Servitor. For your god sleeps, yes, sleeps in a tomb of rock and water and darkness. And it dreams of the before-time, dreams of freedom and movement and life.]_

_[Wake it. Rouse it from its slumber, send it crashing down on those who would not believe. Give it the freedom it desires – the freedom to pass judgement on the unfaithful, from whom you are forced to hide.]_

_[We will show you how.]_

* * *

_Author's note: This is proving to be a _much_ bigger undertaking than I anticipated when I started writing – I'm beginning to wish I'd cut my teeth on something a little shorter before I plunged headfirst into this. As a result, despite having plans for up to about fifteen chapters in total kicking around, I've started to suffer a case of writer's block. So the update schedule, which I've tried to keep fairly regular, is probably going to go to hell soon. Also, I'm going to try working on another story in tandem with this one, the first chapter of which is already under construction. _

_So my thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read this, and I hope to bring you a new story – as well as new chapters for this one – soon._


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

_October, 2032_

It was cold, up in the northern forests as the year began to wind down. Near the border with Canada, the Maine woods shivered as the cold winds swept southwards. The heralds of the coming winter brought with them the first flurries of snow, which carpeted the ground in a thick, white sheet. The sun had gone below the horizon five hours ago now, and it was difficult to imagine that it would ever reappear. The cold was invasive, cutting through clothing like a knife and plunging deep into the body. It is a wonder that humans ever survived in this place before the invention of modern thermal clothing and insulated houses, let alone were able to call it home.

In a clearing in the forest the snow fell deeper than under the protective boughs of the surrounding wood. Here, large footprints marched across the open ground, indents in the snow that were rapidly being filled in. They had the vague suggestion of human prints, but the stride was colossal and the shape subtly wrong – too long and pointed, as if there was but one large toe on each foot. Accompanying these prints across the clearing was a deep furrow, as if something heavy had been dragged this way recently. The snow around this furrow was tinged with red.

Crouched next to one of the footprints and huddled deep inside a parka with the hood drawn up tight was a boy. He studied the print with fascination, running a gloved finger around its rim. Red-irised eyes glittered behind tinted snow goggles, and a single strand of blond hair fell out from under the hood, where it was tugged and twisted by the wind.

Suddenly, from the north-east, came a loud, piercing, ululating cry. It rose and fell in pitch like a siren, shrieking and whooping across the treetops before changing into a wet cackling that faded slowly, leaving nothing but the moan of the wind in its wake like a dreadful echo.

It was a sound that was meant to strike fear into the hearts of men. It was the hunting cry of a wendigo.

The boy straightened up and gazed in the direction that the sound had come from. He could hear its approach now, the crash-_thud_ of its passage as it shambled through the sleeping forest, ripping boughs from trees and tossing them aside like matchwood. A terrible, foetid smell began to permeate the air, like the stink of rotten meat, and the ground began to tremble as the creature grew nearer. Then, in one swift movement, a small pine tree on the edge of the clearing was pitched aside in a burst of splinters, and the thing stood before him.

The first thing that struck him was the sheer size of it. It towered over him, twelve feet of matted fur on a lean, wiry frame. Bright yellow eyes like a warship's searchlights cast a malignant glow as the wendigo bent down to get a better view of him, dropping down onto all fours like an ape as it did so. Its huge paws, dripping crimson blood, gouged holes in the snow that glistened red as if the very earth was wounded by the presence of this ravenous monster.

The wendigo, for its part, was grudgingly impressed with this child. It gave off no stink of fear, not even the slightest whimper passed its lips. It certainly did not collapse and beg for mercy that it knew deep down it would not receive, or void its bowels in terror, as grown men had done that very night. It was even more impressed, and ever so slightly amused, when the boy calmly reached down and retrieved a knife from a scabbard attached to his belt. The knife gleamed a lustrous white under what moonlight broke through the clouds, in a manner that only raw silver was able to do.

The wendigo uttered a barking, guttural laugh. "I can see you've done your homework, child," it rumbled in a voice like the splintering of old bones. "Spend all your pocket money on that knife, did you?"

The boy tightened his grip, but said nothing. With a leer, the wendigo thrust its head forward, baring rotten teeth that reeked of decay. "Ridiculous," it said. "I am a wendigo! I am the storm, the forest, the cold of the snow and the fear of the night. I feed on men like they were cattle; your finest warriors are but meat to me. The cloud, the wind, the tornado and the storm all bend to _my_ will! I am the hunger in humanity's belly, the agony of starvation – and what, pray, what are _you_?"

Schrödinger, formerly Warrant Officer and now Special Agent, grinned behind his goggles and mask. Sometimes, these lines just seemed tailor-made.

"I?" he replied, "_I_ am everywhere, and nowhere."

* * *

Deep under the water, the priesthood gazed out over the massed ranks of their army. They had formed up in the square in front of the temple, every last child of Dagon that was capable of fighting. Some of them clutched crude weapons, but most stood with nothing more than their brute strength and sharpened claws to carry into battle. It mattered little to the priests, for the children were little more than cannon fodder. When they sallied forth to attack the bastions of humanity the priests would leave also, and on a much more fruitful mission.

The priests have come a long way since they first trudged up out of the abyssal depths, more than a century ago. Their immortal hive-memory still remembers the fiery descent as they fell from the stars, the impact of their vessel against the cold waves, the slow, almost peaceful descent as they drifted to depths where no light shines. It remembers how they crawled onto the submerged surface of this waterlogged world, and their great, screaming joy as they tasted the water and found that yes, this was it, the wet rock on which their Father had been incarcerated.

But as they swarmed through the seas, they had learned that the insidious Elder Things had played one last trick on them. Father Cthulhu was buried, sealed in a sunken prison that was locked securely against any magic of theirs. And the tumblers of that lock would only click into position once the starts were right again, when the constellations gave their blessing. The star-spawn of Cthulhu would be forced to wait, held hostage to the machinations of the Elder Things even in their resurrection.

But a century is nothing to a star-spawn, and so they began to consolidate their power on this tomb-world. The apes that swarmed over the dry land were too numerous to fully subjugate, even for the star-spawn (although, thinks the hive-memory with something akin to a wry smile, that does not mean they cannot be _influenced_). But below the sea there lived another species, the fish-people. Their minds were far weaker to suggestion than the upstart mammals above, and they already knew of and worshipped the Cuttle-god in their own degenerate ways. And so the star-spawn had marched on the city of the Deep Ones, who called themselves the children of Dagon. They had swept through the streets, subverting minds with all the effort of a languorous wave of a tentacle. They had gathered an army in seconds, and advanced on the great hall of Father Dagon himself.

Dagon, that monstrous, corpulent First-born Deep One had sat on his coral throne and laughed as the star-spawn demanded he surrender to them. In response, the star-spawn had turned his royal guards against him. Dagon and his bloated consort Mother Hydra had been fed to sharks, the great hall had been razed and the temple to Cthulhu had been erected where it had stood. The children of Dagon were kept cowed by the psychic whips of their new masters and the corroding toxins that they released into the water. And from that day the star-spawn had prospered, and planned.

They could feel it, across the miles of the deep. The lock was turning slowly but surely into place. The engines and energies that had kept a god in sleep were winding down, fading, shuddering to a halt. The hour was almost at hand. And so the priests raised their arms and delivered one last command to the enslaved Deep Ones.

_[Go,]_ they said. _[Go and fight.]_

As the children of Dagon filed past them, clambering up the slopes to where dry land met the sea, the priests shifted their attention. To places across the ocean, they sent another message:

_[O servitor cults, your hour has arrived. Let your gods sleep no more.]_

_[Arise!]_

* * *

Deep underground, in a cavern where there is no light and the only sound was the drip-drip-drop of water, something stirred.

It had lain here for time immemorial, its batteries exhausted, waiting for some event to wear down the miles of rock above it and allow it to rejoin its shoggoth-kin. It knew not how much time had passed. All it knew, suddenly, was that there was not just stone and water in this place.

There was _energy_.

The effect was profound. Inside an impossibly alien mind, ancient subroutines were brought back online. Complex computation began once again. Sleep cycles were cast aside like broken chains, and experimental limbs rippled across the surface of the hollow, searching, sniffing for this sudden influx of food. And when they found it, in the form of a mysterious cable snaking down from the ceiling, they battened on and began to drink. Electricity flowed through the hungry body, accumulators begin to recharge. And suddenly, with this meal came something else. A strange sentience, not of a type the creature had ever encountered before, rushed in with it and began to try and wrest control of the formless body from its master.

If it is possible for a mind made purely of logic gates and numerical analyses to feel fury this one felt it now. With almost contemptible ease it drew up its mental drawbridges, leaving the foreign consciousness abandoned and disorientated. And as the invader began to scream in fear, realising that it was now trapped within the god it had sought to command, the creature rifled through its memories, and learned many things.

Sated by the sudden glut of power, the shoggoth began to climb. Up it surged, through rocks laid down when the Earth was still young, through sandstones, shale and granites, riding an express elevator through geological time as the strata flashed past it. Faster and faster it rose, billowing, re-forming and mutating, a thousand eyes gazing into the darkness as it followed the miles of cable that had been sent down to revive it. Higher, higher, the strange new airs it passed through bringing the waft of food, of energy and power, until at last the shoggoth burst upon the surface it had not seen for millions of years.

It erupted out of the Nant Gwrtheyrn well like a volcano of thick, black tar. Hundreds of pseudopods lashed through the air as it heaved its bulk from the well shaft, gripping and coiling as they did so. Its eyes glared balefully at the figures congregated around the well shaft, many on their knees in front of their god. The shoggoth paid special notice to one in particular, which was wearing a strange device on its head that connected to the cable it had followed up from below. Weak signals continued to pulse down the line as the mind that had tried to invade it still writhed in panic. Recognising the physical form of its attacker, the shoggoth reached down and crushed it beneath a limb.

There was a moan from the cultists as their high priest died. Some, their resolve already weakened by the protoplasmic terror that had turned out to be their deity, began to flee. The others took a few uncertain steps back.

The shoggoth began to run systems checks. Major damage and erosion was noted in many vital areas. A ready supply of hydrocarbon chains and other organic molecules would be required before repair functions could commence. It looked at the cultists with renewed interest.

An hour later, as digestive enzymes did their work, the shoggoth sent a signal. Through the ether, through the networks its kind had used since their creation, it asked at large: _I am here, but where are you?_

There was no reply.

* * *

But that did not mean that none heard. Far away, across the island upon which the shoggoth had emerged, Alucard sat and listened. He did not hear the wording of the cry, or even the sentiment behind it. But he felt it nonetheless, as it passed through the fabric of reality like the ripples on the surface of a pond. He knew that something had arrived in this world, something large and powerful and old. He pulled a silver gun from under his blood-red coat, and began to load it.

Meanwhile, Seras found her gaze drawn inexorably towards the Harkonnen cannon mounted on her wall, and felt a strange premonition.

In a building in Washington DC, Dr Matthias sat behind a desk and counted the days until he would be ready for service, while two floors above him Director-General Redfield and Deputy Snowdon looked at pictures from a file marked 'Innsmouth' and wondered what the hell was going on.

Back in England, Sir Integra Hellsing put the phone down after a lengthy conversation with Cardinal M'quve of Iscariot.

In the northern woods of Maine, Schrödinger stood over the corpse of a wendigo and suddenly received orders to return to base immediately.

In Krakow, fresh from the extermination of a vampire coven, a woman with a ruined face and who wore a dark grey cassock said a prayer before she went to bed, as yet unaware of the gathering storm.

And so the battle lines were drawn.

* * *

_Author's note: A slightly shorter chapter this time, as I am now splitting time between this story and another one I am working on (the second chapter of which is being published in tandem with this). This will be the last update for a few weeks now, although I promise not abandon it. Until then, though, my thanks for your time._


	7. Chapter 7

_Author's note: Well it's been a little longer than the three weeks I had planned, but I've finally managed to get this chapter up. The updates are going to be a lot more erratic from now on, I'm afraid, although I hope I can stick to a 'chapter per month' minimum._

* * *

Chapter 7

The Hellsing gyrodyne lifted off from the manor's helipad just before three o'clock in the morning, its turbines howling as it sped away westwards. Inside, Sir Integra sat and gazed pensively out of the window as the suburbs of London fell away behind them. Opposite her sat Alucard and Seras, both of them wondering what had called them away from Hellsing manor in such a hurry – and why Sir Integra wasn't saying anything at all.

It was half an hour after they had taken off before Integra looked away from the window and addressed the two vampires sat before her.

"Well, I suppose you're probably asking yourselves what's going on," she said, with the air of someone putting aside their immediate worries for later. She lit a cigar and leaned forward in her chair. Reaching underneath her seat, she pulled out a map of the UK and turned to the pages that showed north Wales.

"This is the Llyn Peninsula," she said, pointing to a strip of land jutting out of the north-west coast. "It's a relatively unpopulated corner of Wales – the largest settlement is a town called Pwllheli, with about 4,500 people living in it. Other than that, there isn't a whole lot except scenic overlooks, forests and fields. It's something of a backwater, although it does a fairly good tourist trade in the summer. Certainly, Hellsing has never had a problem there before."

Alucard thought back to the strange, ethereal cry he had heard the previous night. _A first time for everything_, he thought, but said nothing.

"And about here," continued Integra, jabbing her finger at a small part of the map that had no markings on it at all, "is the location of the village of Nant Gwrtheyrn. It used to be an old quarrying and fishing village, but it was abandoned in the 1940s after the quarry closed down. They built a language centre there in the 80s, but that closed down about twenty years ago. Nowadays it's pretty much deserted.

"Yesterday morning, the police department in Pwhelli, which is almost straight across the peninsula from Nant Gwrtheyrn, got an anonymous call. The number was later traced to a public telephone booth in a caravan site close to Nant Gwrtheyrn. The caller didn't stay on the line long, but he said something about a disaster in the abandoned village. He also said something about a monster coming up out of the village well, but naturally the police didn't really pay much attention to that bit. They dispatched a pair of constables to make sure everything was all right, expecting it to just be a prank call. No-one's heard back from either of them yet."

Integra pointed to a thin black line that ran horizontally across the top of the map, like someone had dashed a pencil across it. "Now this here is the Blaidd Drwg power line. They built it about two years ago to connect the tidal power plants in St George's Channel to a substation outside Chester. At about midnight last night, the Blaidd Drwg line reported a massive loss in voltage, as if something was siphoning off power. They assumed something had gone wrong with a pylon and sent out a team to investigate. They didn't find anything wrong with the line, but their helicopter did manage to get a picture of _this_."

She pushed a picture over to Alucard and Seras. The young vampire's eyes went wide when she saw what it was they might be going up against, while her master just raised an eyebrow. He thought he saw something of himself in the pitch-black, many-eyed mass that the picture showed.

"And before either of you ask, no, I have absolutely no damn clue what that thing is," said Integra. "Also, we don't know where it is. It's moved on from where it was when that photo was taken, and no-one has found it yet."

"Which must be where we come in," said Alucard, still gazing at the photograph.

* * *

Two hours later, the eastern horizon was beginning to glow orange and Seras Victoria was almost beginning to panic.

Firstly, their mysterious monster had completely disappeared. This was no mean feat considering that what they were searching for was an amoeba-_thing_ as big as a house and covered in eyes as big as saucers. You'd think that something like that would be pretty hard to conceal in the largely open terrain of the Llyn Peninsula, but apparently not.

_Someone must have seen something_, she thought to herself as she flitted through the sky on wings that weren't entirely there. _Then again, I can't exactly go door-to-door, can I? "Excuse me, ma'am, have you seen a creature made of living tar come this way recently? Yes, about the size of an Intercity train. Hundreds of eyes, you can't miss it. No? Well, that's a shame."_

_Maybe we should put up posters. 'Have you seen this monster?'_

It wouldn't be so bad, she supposed, if the thing itself wasn't such an unknown. Hellsing had devoted almost the entirety of its existence to hunting down vampires, with only the occasional werewolf or goblin providing a little variety. In all cases, the monsters they fought were at least recognisable – they had human forms, were familiar from popular myths, often they had originally been people. But this? Seras wasn't even sure what she should do with it if she found it. She was carrying an assault rifle in one hand and had her Harkonnen cannon strapped across her back, but she didn't even know if either of them would have any effect. All of her weaponry had been designed for use against undead, all her skills and training were designed to combat the usual vampires and ghouls – and now she was charging headlong into battle with something that was very unusual indeed.

But it had been an unusual year, hadn't it? Not only this mysterious creature that no-one could identify, but that attack in Scotland as well.

That was the second reason Seras was beginning to panic.

They had dropped Alucard off in the abandoned centre of Nant Gwrtheyrn, so that he could try and pick up the creature's trail from there. One look at the village well – or what was left of it – had confirmed their suspicions that it must have originated from the village. The gyrodyne had then headed south, across the peninsula, to where the thing had last been seen by the power line repair crew. And as it had done so, Sir Integra had told Seras something astonishing.

"You must understand that my gut instinct is not to tell anyone about this until I've had an opportunity to verify it," she had said, her face showing a thoughtful frown. "But I'm not sure I have the time and if I can't trust you, Seras, then who can I trust?"

Seras said nothing, waiting for Sir Integra to continue. She had a feeling that what her master had to say would have something to do with her unusual and troubling silence as they had flown in from London.

"If I say 'American branch' to you, Seras, what do you think of?" Sir Integra asked after a moment.

The younger woman frowned. "Iscariot, I suppose. Don't the Americans contract out their supernatural defence to that division of our friends from the Vatican?"

"From about 1840 to 2000, Iscariot's American branch looked after North America, yes. And, until last night, I believed they still did."

Seras looked confused. "You mean..." she began.

Sir Integra had sighed. "I was on the telephone to Cardinal M'quve last night. You remember how some of the key members of that railroad smuggling organisation fled to America?" She gave a quiet snort of bitter laughter. "Back when the railroad was all we had to worry about. Anyway, I finally managed to arrange a call to M'quve about that. I thought his American agents would be happy to take over, seeing as Iscariot was the one who put us onto the railroad in the first place.

"At first, he thought I was joking, and after I persisted he thought I was deliberately insulting him. But after I got him to calm down, he told me something very interesting. Specifically, he told me that the American branch was shut down after the Long Night. Apparently, after the Washington massacre, most of its members were expelled from the country. The Yanks took a rather dim view of Maxwell's decision to leave their capital city to its fate, and Iscariot assumed that they must have consequently struck a deal with us."

Sir Integra had looked directly at Seras, and she suddenly looked almost frightened. "But I never heard anything from Washington. They never approached us at all. Which begs the question: who's been looking after America these past thirty-two years? Who has stopped vampires overrunning them? What is going on across the Atlantic?"

Seras was suddenly struck by the enormity of what they might be facing. "A third agency?" she whispered.

"Exactly. Hellsing, Iscariot...and now, someone else. Someone who has deliberately hidden themselves away from us for over three decades – and succeed, no less. And that's just the start of it, Seras. I have a feeling – just a hunch, mind you, nothing more – that these people may yet turn out to be behind what happened at Lossiemouth."

Seras had the expression of someone who had just realised they're standing on quicksand. "But...but why would they attack us? Surely we'd be on the same side? It's not like we could have ever done anything to them..."

"The only difference between us and Iscariot is that we worship the same God in marginally different ways, and we've been at each other's throats for over a century. People don't seem to need much of an excuse to hate each other."

Sir Integra had gone on to tell Seras about what Dr Barlow had found. "It all seems to add up, doesn't it?" she asked. "The key players behind the railroad have fled to America. We've been dealing with artificial vampires for over 15 years and not realised it. And then Alucard returns, the artificial ones stop...and a year later, we're attacked by a combat android that seems to have similar artificial vampires on its payroll.

"I think we've been fighting a war without realising it, Seras. And I think whoever we've been fighting has stepped up their game recently – which makes me very apprehensive about what we're dealing with now. Is this another trap, like Lossiemouth? Or is this completely unconnected? Whichever it is, I want you to tread very carefully tonight."

Seras was quite for a few seconds. "I can see now why you waited until Alucard was gone before you told me all this," she said at last.

"Exactly. The last thing I need right now is him thinking we've got a solid lead on who it was in Scotland – after all, if there's one thing he loves, it's a rematch. Which reminds me, Seras: I know he's your master, but I'm his so I suppose that means, from your point of view, I outrank him. And I am ordering you not to say a damn word about what I have just told you. I don't like forcing you to keep secrets from him, but I think you'll agree that under the circumstances it's for the best. What we need to do now is proceed with caution – not something Alucard's really good at."

Seras nodded her understanding. "I suppose," she had said after a while, "what we really need to do is find that bloody Schrödinger. Find out who stole his soul, and we'll clear a lot up."

But now, with sunrise fast approaching, Seras doubted their ability to find anything at all.

Suddenly, from the north, her heightened senses heard the crack-crack-crack of gunfire.

* * *

Schrödinger was beginning to get thoroughly sick of Innsmouth.

He was sat in the steeple of one of the small town's three ramshackle, run-down churches, gazing with a sour expression out across the dimly-lit roofs. There was no moon tonight. A thick layer of cloud lent the night sky a drab, grey monotony and what light there was came from the town, where weak orange street lights were smothered by the thick fog that had rolled in from the sea last night. The fog was that dense, cloying type that seemed more akin to mud than to cloud, in the way that it swirled lazily through the streets and almost stuck to your clothes as you walked through it.

The fog had come suddenly, moving with deceptive speed, slithering down through the streets and pressing up against windows. The old men and women of Innsmouth had clicked their tongues at its arrival, an old tradition of the town to ward off evil, and began to regale their grandchildren with tales of how they hadn't seen a 'pea-souper' as bad as this since the one in '56 or '57. And most of their audience would roll their eyes good-naturedly and go off and help prepare dinner, and even those that didn't would largely ignore the tales of the monsters that were said to climb up out of the sea when the fog was this bad – but they would all still double check that their doors and windows were locked before they went to bed, although perhaps without quite knowing why.

And come the next morning when the townspeople woke to find the sun weakly filtering through the fog, they would give a quiet chuckle as they wondered why they had ever let this simple fog scare them so much – except, of course, in the houses where the doors and windows had not been as secure as their owners though they had been.

Schrödinger knew none of this, however. All he knew was that he'd been told to sit around in Innsmouth and let Perseus know the moment anything seemed amiss and that, against his better judgement, was exactly what he'd been doing since early morning. And, aside from the fog, which was really quite unusually thick, there seemed to be nothing amiss at all in this sleepy, peaceful and above all _boring_ harbour town.

What Schrödinger also didn't know was that the fog wasn't really fog at all. Weather satellites had shown that instead of forming somewhere out to sea and blowing in on the wind like a normal fogbank, this mysterious cloud instead seemed to be billowing out of the ocean like the smoke from a fire a few miles off the coast from Innsmouth. Not only that but it was moving _against_ the wind, slowly chugging towards the coast despite the offshore breeze. Officially it was only a matter for concern with NOAA and the US coastguard, who were getting ready for increased shipping accidents in the vicinity of the fogbank. Unofficially, Perseus had decided to keep an eye on it as well – just in case.

And Schrödinger, with his ability to make a mockery of travel times, had seemed to the logical choice of agent to send down there until someone else could be found to investigate.

Now, sat in the dust and litter in the disused church spire, he let his mind wander, confident that Innsmouth could look after itself for a little while. It had been five months now since his sudden and utterly unexpected return to the material world, and he was only just beginning to stop pinching himself every few minutes. He remembered little of his time imprisoned inside Alucard – the words 'minor invocation decay' had been bandied about a lot, although they meant little to him – but he was in some ways glad of that.

Did he miss Millennium? That was a hard question to answer. While he couldn't deny that the planning and execution of the Long Night had been tremendous fun, the same couldn't be said for the actual members of the Last Battalion. The only ones he had really cared for had been the Major and the Captain, and they had been happy to cast him into Limbo for thirty years in the name of their stupid war. Beyond that, well: the simpering, uptight Dok, the utterly deranged Zorin, and Rip van Winkle who never stopped singing to herself. No, he did not miss _them_ at all.

And after all, if it was fun he wanted, there was a lot to recommend in fighting wendigo.

Across the harbour the sonorous bellow of a foghorn droned out into the mist, dragging Schrödinger from his reverie. He suddenly realised he was starving. His last meal had more than a day ago, just before he headed up to Maine. Pulling up the hood of his jacket to hide his ears (one of the reasons he'd never be a good undercover operative), he set out into the Innsmouth night in search of something to eat.

* * *

Alucard was just quick enough to dodge the first tentacle that swept down from the treetops, but not nearly fast enough to dodge the other five. They slammed into him, coiling around his chest and arms and hurling him into the trunk of a nearby tree hard enough to crack it. His ribcage shattered, healed, and then he raised his gun and opened fire on the black, billowing mass that was beginning to pour down from above.

He had been tracking this creature from the Nant Gwrtheyrn, following the strange scent it left in its wake. His search had lead him to a small copse about five miles from the abandoned village and very close to the Blaidd Drwg line that his master had mentioned, where the trail had suddenly disappeared from the ground. It was here that he had been ambushed by the shoggoth, which had retreated into the branches of a large oak. Camouflaging itself amongst the branches, he had completely failed to see it until it had reached down and attacked.

Now, he lay against the trunk of the tree and emptied the Casull into the advancing monster. The armour-piercing rounds left thin tracks in the flesh of the shoggoth as they burrowed through it, but otherwise did little damage. They were designed for use against creatures with vital organs and strong yet brittle armour – the amoebic shoggoth was about as inconvenienced by them as by a sharp stick.

_Time to up the game_, Alucard thought, and loaded a different clip into his Casull. Rising to his feet, he fired again as the shoggoth lunged for him.

Alucard's new clip had been loaded with white phosphorous incendiary rounds. These burst against the shoggoth and exploded, splashing burning phosphorous across the beast's skin. It gave high-pitched squeal of pain and the parts that had been hit shrank back from the flames, curling and flowing over themselves in an effort to snuff out the fire. The rest of the shoggoth, however, kept coming. It flexed and morphed its body into hundreds of thin, sharp spikes and rammed them though him, puncturing his head and torso. With an almost disdainful flick of these spines the shoggoth tore Alucard apart, shredding his chest and ripping off his limbs. Blood sprayed out of his ruined neck as his head hinged back on a scrap of tissue, a gleaming chunk of bone sticking almost comically up from the wound. His hand spasmed, no longer attached to the wrist, and the Casull clattered to the ground. The body of its owner followed a second later.

The shoggoth extended fine cilia-like fingers and began to sift almost idly through the wet, red remains. Eyes blossomed out on stalks and peered thoughtfully at the carcass. There had been something _different_ about this one. It looked identical to the bipeds that had roused it, but it was in some way not the same – it had been faster, stronger. There was something else, too...something strangely familiar that its ancient, damaged memory units could not place.

No matter. It was dead now, and its raw materials could be put to good use-

"Very good. _Very_ good."

Alucard grinned. His shorn-off head was bent back, facing away from the creature, so he could not see its eyes widen in something approximating surprise. Even so, he could feel its cilia spring back, forming themselves into slashing weapons again as their owner jerked back onto a combat setting.

"But not _quite_ good enough."

The shoggoth froze. _This was not supposed to happen_.

"Releasing Control Art Restrictions to level one."

A mass of something that wasn't quite blood and wasn't quite darkness rose up from the broken corpse, which began to dissolve into the shadows it was giving birth to. A dark mass like a hole in the universe picked itself up almost gracefully and stood before its protoplasmic attacker. A hundred impossible eyes glared at a thousand soulless ones.

"Now...shall we have some real fun?"


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's note: 'A chapter per month', I said. Well, that turned out great, didn't it? For a long time I thought I'd pretty much given up on this fic, but I think I'm going to stick with it after all. My deepest apologies for the hiatus, and all I can say is that the next chapter will be up when it's up._

* * *

Chapter 8

Another thing that Schrödinger hadn't missed about Millennium was the food.

In an organisation largely composed of vampires, and with all the dietary monotony that implied, a decent meal had been hard to come by. Most of the good stuff had been earmarked for the Major and the wizened old generals, leaving the few human staff to subsist largely on MRE rations. If Schrödinger wanted something other than watery beef stew or largely tasteless pasta, he usually had to beg for scraps from the kitchen or the officer's table. The latter was usually accomplished by curling up next to the Major's chair, nuzzling the man's leg and purring a lot – something he hated having to do, even if the reward usually made up for it.

Now, sat on a bench in the Innsmouth fog and working his way through a pile of junk food, he was more than glad to put those day behind him. Munching on a cheeseburger, he began to wonder why he had been sent to this small town on such short notice. Something to do with the fog, perhaps? Maybe, although he didn't think his new masters were the kind of people to worry about bad weather too much.

Something in the fog, then? But what?

From far away came the thin, shimmering sound of breaking glass. Immediately his ears pricked up, trying to locate where the sound had come from. The fog made it difficult, slowing down and muffling the sound so much that for a moment he wasn't sure he'd heard anything at all. Then came the familiar, high-pitched wail of a human scream.

He leapt out of existence, stuffing the half-eaten burger into his pocket as he did so. Dispersing throughout space-time, he coalesced close to where he thought the sounds had been coming from.

Looking around, he realised that he was stood inside the fast food place where he'd bought his food barely fifteen minutes ago. The front of the shop was ruined. The two plate glass windows either side of the door had been shattered, broken glass strewn everywhere. The door had splintered and was hanging at an angle off its hinges, like something heavy had crashed through it. Fog was beginning to leak in, waving blind tendrils across the floor. The lights slowly flickered on and off, and occasionally showered sparks as their damaged circuits burned out.

One of the lights blinked back on for a second. It shone on the slumped bodies of the staff, turning the pools of blood around their feet a strange purple in its blue-tinted light. Limbs had been torn off, chest cavities pulled open and bones snapped like they were twigs. One of them was sprawled across the counter as if something had reached over and dragged him across it. The wound where his right arm had been glittered.

Behind him, Schrödinger suddenly realised that he could hear the bellows-like sound of laboured breathing.

He turned around.

* * *

The fight was not going as well for Alucard as he had expected.

He had intended, as the Control Art restrictions had fallen away from him like sloughed-off dead skin, to beat the shoggoth at its own game, reaching into it and tearing it apart from within. Unfortunately, as he was beginning to find out, the shoggoth seemed to have no internal structure at all. It was the same black, tarry substance all the way through with nothing like organs that he could find. The more he rent and tore, the more the viscous substance of the creature simply re-formed and continued attacking.

The shoggoth, for its part, had also decided to try a new tactic. Instead of simply cutting up this odd enemy, which had been shown to be useless, it instead tried to corrode it. Digestive enzymes were squirted from suddenly-forming nozzles and the very substance it was made of began to eat away at Alucard, trying to disassemble him one molecule at a time. But the wafting shadow that was its attacker offered little for the shoggoth to get ahold of – as it drifted in and out of solidity, the enzyme jets passed straight through it, as did the tiny particles that made up the shoggoth's flesh.

In short, the battle had largely ground to a standstill, with both vampire and servitor largely immune to the other's attacks.

_A much greater challenge than I'd anticipated,_ thought Alucard with glee. _Now, I wonder if-_

Any further thought was cut off by a sudden, booming roar. It sounded like the end of the world had just occurred right next to him. Waves of sound crashed down around him as the echoes of the enormous explosion ricocheted around the trees.

The shoggoth howled and fell away from him. Pulling his form back into a more human one, Alucard could see a huge crater had been opened in it, as if it had burst from the inside. Fragments of its viscous flesh lay in rags all around, scattered on the floor and hanging from the tree tops. What was left of the main body began to totter and collapse.

_How...did I...?_

The shoggoth sank to the floor, still whimpering. Behind it stood Seras, her eyes like embers and the barrel of her Harkonnen pointed firmly at the glutinous remains.

_Ah._

"Why is it, master, that whenever I follow gunfire I always seem to find you?" Seras grinned. Her tone became more serious. "Are you all right? What _was_ that thing?"

"I'm fine," replied Alucard, dusting himself off. "Haven't had this much fun for a long time," he added with a small smile. "And not was, by the way. _Is_."

He pointed to the shoggoth, which was already beginning to pull itself back together. The separate bits that had been blown off by the the Harkonnen shell were slithering back towards the main body. One wriggled over Seras' shoe, a single eye glowering up at her.

"_Ugh_," she said, kicking the worm-like scrap away from her. "Do you think this thing ever gives up?"

"I think we're about to find out," said Alucard. "Go. Find Sir Integra and tell her what's happening." Seras looked like she was about to argue but he held up a hand, silencing her. "_Go_. I've got a plan to deal with this thing."

"And if it doesn't work?"

Alucard did not reply.

* * *

For the second time in two days, the shoggoth felt a kind of fury. As it wrenched itself back together, it revised its plans for the two bipeds that had attacked it. Previously it would have been content just to maim and wound, so that they would not be able to bother it any more. Now, however, they would be _crushed_.

It watched as the smaller of the two, the one who had blown it apart in the first place, took to the air and fled away eastwards. It was briefly silhouetted against the orange sky – sunrise would not be long now – before vanishing out of sight, flitting past one of the metal gantries that dominated the skyline.

It turned its attention to the other and found that one was running too. Ordinarily it might have simply let it go, but not now, not after what it shown itself capable of. Now, it surged in pursuit, flowing after the sprinting biped like a hungry wave. Pseudopods writhed and the gelatinous body pulsated as it heaved it bulk after the creature that had dared try to destroy it. Eyes sank and surfaced on its skin like angry warts, tracking the shoggoth's prey with unblinking malice.

And, to its tremendous satisfaction, its quarry seemed to be tiring. The biped was slowing down, starting to bend double with the effort of its movements. The shoggoth could hear the thing's breath now, coming in fits and starts. Wheezing, it began to stagger towards one of the large metal pylons that marched in a row across the landscape. High above them, metal cables murmured with the power flowing though them. The shoggoth, recognising a possible energy source for its prey, accelerated. Tentacles stretched and extended, reaching for Alucard like a nest of hungry snakes.

Alucard came to a halt beneath the Blaidd Drwg power line. Directly underneath them, the hum of the cables was audible even over the wet noises of the shoggoth. Suddenly, any inkling of tiredness in the no-life king was gone. He straightened up and pulled out his Casull. As the shoggoth lunged for him, he pointed it into the air and fired four shots.

The high-voltage cables of the National Grid of the UK are designed to withstand gale-force winds and other environmental stresses. They are _not_ designed to withstand a direct hit from an armour-piercing 11.5mm pistol round. The four cables of the Blaidd Drwg line snapped with a quiet _snick_ as the bullets burrowed through them and, spitting sparks, the severed ends fell down towards the two creatures below. They landed neatly on the back of the very surprised shoggoth.

For a brief moment, the shoggoth became part of the Grid. Two hundred thousand volts of electricity seared through it, burning and melting it beyond repair. Brilliant blue arcs of lightning danced across its surface, so bright they made it hard to look at. The very flesh of the shoggoth began to liquefy as the current burst apart molecular-level bonds inside it. There was a thick, wet popping noise as parts of the shoggoth began to bubble. It whimpered and screamed, crying out for aid from allies that some small part of its disintegrating brain insisted must still be alive. Alucard, stood next to it, felt these cries like a blow to the chest.

And then, in a matter of seconds, it was over. All along the Blaidd Drwg line, safety fuses exploded as the system shut down. Already, alarms would be howling in control centres from St George's Channel to Chester. The shoggoth, by contrast, finally fell silent, a last spasm of consciousness flickering through its mind before it faded.

Alucard sat down to wait next to the ruins of the shoggoth, which were still bubbling slightly from the heat. Far away to the east, he could see the lights of the Hellsing gyrodyne as it swept down to meet him.

* * *

Behind a desk on the other side of the Atlantic, Dr Matthias sat and watched a bank of screens. '_Internal security'_, he thought. _What a joke._

He had been doing this for five months now and was beginning to worry that the change might be permanent. Originally, this job of just gazing at CCTV feeds had been something for him to do while his repairs were completed. Now, however, three requests for a return to field duty had been turned down. Maybe Perseus had finally decided he was obsolete? He didn't even know whether Iatromechs had a shelf life, but the possibility that he had reached the end of his was looking more likely by the day.

So, until someone came and told him he was to be scrapped, he simply had to wait. And so he monitored the security cameras in an attempt to take his mind off of things, although they never showed anything interesting. Installation 1, Perseus' headquarters located in Washington DC, was not the most exciting of places. Most of the screens just showed rows of desk workers, busy collating reports and planning new offensives.

After a while, one of the screens caught his eye. Camera 21 looked out over the main entrance to the building, and covered the road that lead up to it. Four large lorries could be seen making their way up the road towards the compound.

Matthias checked the delivery schedules. Nothing was planned this late at night. He began to call up more inventory lists, trying to find out where these trucks had come from.

The telephone on his desk rang. Without taking his eyes off his computer screen, he answered it.

"Matthias," he said.

"Matthias, it's Redfield. I've just had Special Agent Schrödinger in my office."

Matthias sighed inwardly. As something approaching a 'rescuer' in the strange boy's eyes, and consequently one of the few people Schrödinger would listen to, he was often called in to reprimand the child whenever he became too exasperating. "If he has been an annoyance-" he began.

"No, no, Matthias. It isn't that." A pause. "Matthias, I've decided to put you back on active service again."

"I am very grateful for that, sir," said Matthias with some surprise. He watched the four lorries pull up right outside the Installation. He zoomed the camera in on them as their cargo doors opened.

"Matthias, I want you to head down to a town in Massachusetts called Innsmouth immediately. I have reason to believe it has come under attack from...unidentified hostiles. I want you to investigate this immediately; I'm calling in a helicopter to get you there within the hour."

Matthias enlarged the display from camera 21, so the whole bank of screens showed just the one image. Misshapen figures could be seen lumbering out of the lorries, tall human-like shapes with bulging eyes and powerful arms. They were moving towards the Installation entrance.

"I fear, sir," said Dr Matthias, "that the helicopter will not be necessary."


End file.
